The Highs And Lows Of Cleaning

Last Friday I had a "free day" where my Mom had Lucy and Molly for the day so I was able to do whatever I wanted. I chose to clean my house. Like really clean my house. For the most part my house is clean. I try to go to bed at night with everything in it's place, the kitchen clean, and toys picked up. Each Saturday I do the wash, clean our bathroom, change the sheets, and clean up the kitchen a little more than I do during the week.

I don't dust or vacuum near as much as I should. The fact is, I really don't care about dust on the furniture and I really need to be in the mood to do cleaning like that. Friday I was in the mood to do so, so decided to go with it.

I started in our master bathroom and cleaned the shower, the floor, the tub, the ledge of the tub, the TV, the counter....about the only thing I didn't clean was the fan. Our bathroom gets cleaned each week, but it hadn't been this clean since my Mom did it 9 months ago when Molly was born.

I then moved on to clean all parts of the girls' bathroom. I even took all the bath toys downstairs to the kitchen sink and washed them. I dusted the furniture upstairs, vacuumed the upstairs, vacuumed the steps, and them moved on to the downstairs. I didn't need to dust since I had just done that last week when taking down my fall decorations. I cleaned all the floors, including mopping the kitchen floor. Sadly, this does not get done near enough as it should, especially with a crawling baby around our house.

I literally worked from 1pm-5pm when I finally sat down. I was so tired but I felt sooooooooo good! My house was so clean and I loved it! It was nice to enjoy for a few minutes before we went out to dinner with some friends. It was nice coming home to a clean house and even nicer that my parents brought Lucy and Molly back to us. They are so good to help us like this.

The next morning I woke up to a clean house and it was wonderful, until we started messing it up. I got ready in the bathroom which resulted in my hair all over the floor and counter. We fed Molly breakfast which resulted in food crumbs all over the floor. Lucy and Molly played in the living room/play room which resulted in toys strung out all over. We fed Lucy and Molly lunch which resulted in food on the table and floor. We made dinner which resulted in dirty dishes and junk on the stove to clean up. We walked outside which resulted in tracking in some leaves and dirty on our shoes.

I know everything that's clean is just going to get dirty again, but man it's so depressing as to how fast this happens! I think it happens much quicker having littles running around, and I know there's no way to avoid it, but it's just disheartening. I liken it to Thanksgiving dinner. Think about all the time and preparation that goes into Thanksgiving dinner, just to be eaten in 30 minutes and then on to cleaning it all up.

I'm sure you could use this story as a devotion or metaphor for God somehow. Maybe I'll think on that some and continue this post later. For now, I'm going to try and forget how quickly things get dirty and remember how nice and fresh everything was once cleaned.