Home School Curriculum Experts

It’s the bane of my existence. “It” being housework. Not just the bathroom-cleaning, dusting, sink-scrubbing kind. I don’t like that, either, but it’s the “loading the dishwasher three times a day, folding four loads of clothes a day, picking up ten pairs of shoes a day” kind that really bites. And what is worst of all…trying to get kids to consistently help you do it. I came home Saturday to an empty house. The kids had left with dad – two to go to a basketball game, and three to their grandparents’ house for the afternoon. I was looking forward to a few hours to rest, get some things done, and then maybe pick up the girls for some clearance-sale shopping. And then I walked into their room. Oh. My. Goodness. This was the room that had been “cleaned” before they left. I won’t traumatize you with a detailed description of what I found – it would be too harrowing a scene to recount. Suffice it to say that when I piled everything into the center of the room from on the beds, under the beds, on the walls, and over the curtain rods (yes, you heard right) the resulting teetering mountain was waist-high. And that was just the girls’ room.

Now, you need to know that in my former life I was a clean freak. I drove my roommates and my husband crazy. And when I had just one child, I was still able to feed this OCD tendency (at least until he could walk). I even kept all the books on his bookshelf arranged by height. Every day, he would pull himself up beside his bookshelf and, as fast as he could, throw all the books out. And every day, before his nap and before bedtime, I would arrange them, all one hundred of them, back in height order. Now, I realize that this is a teeny bit compulsive. Fast forward to when the girls were small, and there were five. As I sat amid a roomful of toys, swings, bouncy seats, burp cloths, and sippy cups and talked with my son’s (childless) speech therapist, I laughed and mentioned that I used to be a clean freak. She had the gall to look me in the eye and say, “You have got to be kidding me.” Okay, she really didn’t have to say it like that.

My husband and kids would still say that I am a clean freak. I am on them all the time about cleaning, and I am quite sure that they would consider a messy house to be one of the seven deadly sins according to me. In fact, my girls have even been known to include cleaning in their nightly prayers. Okay, that’s sad. But where is the line? How do you maintain a pleasant home that family and guests alike can enjoy, while not harping on your kids all the time and making life miserable for everyone? Do you use a chore list? Do you use punishments? Rewards? And what priority do you place on a clean home? I would really like to hear a sane, reasonable view of things. And in the meantime, I need to go arrange some books :)