Dirty house

My house is a mess.  It is always a mess.  No matter how much I clean and pick up crap, it is still a mess.  I really don’t know how people with children EVER have a clean house.  I also refuse to be a maid and waste my free time or time with my kids on constantly cleaning.  I do clean up the kitchen almost daily, usually after dinner and a little between meals but other than this I only clean once a week.  Thursday is my downstairs cleaning day and once or twice a month I clean the upstairs on a Saturday or Sunday.  No one sees the upstairs, right?  And, no, don’t come over on a Wednesday.  The reason I picked Thursday for my cleaning day is because that is one of the days the two big kids are in school so I only have Allie.  I used to put her in hourly care every Thursday but I haven’t in a while.  I just clean around her and then clean some more when she naps.  I hated the thought of paying for childcare just to clean my house.  If I am going to put her in childcare, I am going to do something good like grocery shop kid free!  I am also not a ‘deep’ cleaner.  My cleaning routine consists of general pick up, vacuuming, dusting some key pieces, cleaning the downstairs bathroom, kitchen, and if time permits, steam cleaning the floor.  This is good enough for me and when my kids see the house clean they say “mom, the cleaning lady was here”.   When I worked full time, we had a cleaning lady.  I told them that “now, I am the cleaning lady so you better pick up all your stuff!”  Even though I say that I don’t deep clean, don’t want to be a maid and won’t give up my free time… every now and again I scream at my family for being such pigs and go on a cleaning bender.  Today was one of those days.  I decided that the rugs were filthy and needed to be shampooed.  In order for me to do this I had to pick everything up and vacuum before I could shampoo the carpet.  This somehow led to an all day cleaning binge.  I even started cleaning the upstairs so it would be ready for the shampooer.  The carpet shampooer was too loud to run during Allie’s nap so during this time I scoured the kid’s bathroom.  It is possibly the grossest room in our house.  There is toothpaste sprayed all over the mirror from their ‘spin brushes’, toothpaste and liquid soap all over the sinks, hair covering everything, a ring around the tub and pee all over the toilet (I said earlier that I only clean upstairs once every few weeks).  After I took on this humongous task, I was ready for a break.  I lay on the couch for an hour and surfed the internet for an hour and then decided to tell you all about it .   (the picture is the after shot.  See, sparkly clean and worth all the scrubbing.  Yes, that was my sarcastic tone)