- Cleaning full sized mirrors. It's ok to clean the top 4 feet, but its better to leave the 2 or 3 feet closest to the ground covered in mini hand prints. Something about a clean mirror attracts little paws.
- Organizing the bottom kitchen cabinets. Or putting anything valuable or breakable in them. This is indeed a "pick your battle" situation. Do you want your kid running around, screaming, while you are making dinner, or is it just easier to open that
treasure chestTupperware cabinet and let them go wild? - Folding any clothes in your kids' drawers. Maybe you are blessed with children who appreciated folded clothes, or maybe you are fortunate to live in a climate where children can go around naked. Neither applies to me. My kids love to empty their clothes drawers. Folding clothes is an exercise in futility in my house.
However, certain chores I have doubled up on since having children. These are easy to list because I do these chores ALL DAY LONG. Not kidding about that.
- Sweeping the floors. Omg, oh my freakin' gosh... I sweep floors all day. Between bread crumbs, chewed up apple peels, milk splatters, I have my vocation cut out for me. The best job prep for being a mom is to have worked custodial in a previous life.
- Picking up toys. Again, unless I want to twist an ankle or break a leg, I have to pick up toys all day long.
- Neatly organizing books on the bottom two shelves. It's an attractive nuisance. Something about "order" prompts my kids to induce instant disorder. So those two shelves are disproportionately empty in my house.
- Keeping the bathroom door shut and the toilet seat down. Joseph has a toilet fetish. I mean, he is obsessed with toilets. And everything that goes in them. And anything he can put in them. I'm sick of fishing him out of the toilet. So out of self-preservation, I've become very good at bathroom etiquette.
Oh, I can't agree enough, Maria. "The best job prep for being a mom is to have worked custodial in a previous life." -- perhaps, but when I tell my husband that he should help me out, since he cleans as a profession, he says "Exactly! I spend all my time at work cleaning, I'm not doing it at home!" Also, Bella also shared Joseph's toilet fetish, something Phaedra was never interested in. She goes through cycles where she's obsessed with it, and the shutting of a bathroom door brings instant tears and tantrums. Not shutting the door means everything is going in the toilet (toys, brushes, hands...) and lots of water is coming out of the toilet. The last cycle of obsession involved Bella "plunging" the toilet with the plunger (slopping the plunger around until most of the bowl water made it onto the floor). Good times :)
ReplyDeleteAt this point, cleaning anything is a losing battle...I had one crazy child and now she has an eager and willing student. But. Good news on the drawer front. My kids finally got over emptying out clothes from dressers. Maybe folded clothing is a future possibility for you too. And I know this is pretty terrible, but I removed a lot of the toys and books from easily accessible places and keep most stuff in the basement and switch stuff out or they eventually drag it back upstairs again...At this age, it seems like they only know how to dump things. :) Picking your battles is an excellent euphemism for "trying to not go completely insane by cleaning the same thing one million times in a row."
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