Joys and pains of cleaning (I WILL cry over spilled milk, thank you)

New Years Resolutions are killer. Ben and I have been trying to tackle the clutter clogged closets and cupboards in our home and to re-organize the garage so we can pull one of the cars in. No task is easy, especially with four small children. We'll come across things that no one has seen in months and think it is a safe toss, only to find one of the kids walking around the house with it hours later after pulling it out of the trash.

Our coat closet is always a menace and I live in fear of cold months when guests arrive wearing coats. The coat closet in our home is the right size for a family of four people who live in a temperate climate. Unfortunately, where we live we go through a wide range of climates and there are six of us. So, it seems everyone has a light jacket, a rain coat, a warm coat, etc. Well, except me, I just have one. Someone has to make a sacrifice around here. So, a two foot hanging rod is not enough to fit these millions of outer layers onto, especially when I find outgrown coats and jackets springing up like weeds in the closet. I feel like I clean the closet shelf monthly, mainly because about once a month the contents on the shelf fall upon my head like a grand avalanche, but since it is kind of high for anyone but Ben, when anything gets put up there it is a result of being tossed up with the hope it will land and stick and knock anything out. The bottom of the closet is a graveyard of tote bags (IE-the pool bag, the church bag, the "we-need-to-clean-out-the-car-so-let's-just-stuff-everything-in-this-bag" bag).

I have to admit that the most frustrating part of a closet or cupboard clean up, is that not only is it tedious, but your house looks frightful once you've emptied the contents of the space you are cleaning. So, now that you have successfully trashed another part of your house for the sake of organizing, you set about deciding what to keep, where to put it, what to do with all of the odds and ends that you are still keeping, but that will no longer belong in the closet or cupboard you're cleaning. Then, voila, your hours of hard work and grief are beautifully hidden behind closed doors once again.

I may be one of the few people who is thrilled when they clean out their fridge or medicine cabinet to find items past their expiration date. I find it quite liberating to toss out the last quarter of salad dressing in the bottle that was taking up all of the space on the fridge door!

Anyway, as much as I love the finished product of my clean, the sheer insanity and mess of the process is quite unsavory. Yesterday, Ben and I began tackling our bedroom, closet, and bathroom. Occasionally, when cleaning you get little rewards. For example, the garage clean yielded the photographs of my three older children that were taken of them when they each turned one. I have been going out of my mind trying to track them down. Then, last night, under my bed, among other treasures like DVDs we forgot we owned, I found an entirely new pair of shoes I bought before Mylie was born and forgot existed. Score!

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning...

Recently, I decided to give our ugly 1980s kitchen floor its well-deserved mopping. Between my kids mishaps while eating -like the occasional innocent food splatter on the floor or the more common intentional flinging of peanut butter sandwich for the purpose of stomping on and smearing across the floor- our floor meets a lot of food. Of course, you've already seen Zack's infamous egg experience of late... My kids are also notorious for ripping open boxes of cereal (when I say ripping open, I really mean it, not even all the king's horses and all the king's men could put these cereal boxes back together again -though I can't really fault the horses, they only had hooves to be working with). Once the box has been properly mutilated, the child proceeds to dump the entire contents of the bag onto the floor, eating a few pieces and then using the remaining piles of cereal as their stage to perform a solo from 'Lord of the Dance' upon. Also, the door to our often muddy backyard is connected to the kitchen. I PROMISE all of you who have come in and disapprovingly judged me on my kitchen floor, I DO clean it all of the time but fate is working against me here!!!!

Here is my case in point; Thursday Maddie went to play with a little girl who just moved into our neighborhood and into the same model of townhouse that we live in. This girl's mom walked Maddie home and came into our house for the very first time. I was mopping the floor when she arrived, so the kitchen table, chairs, etc were all pulled out of the kitchen and into the living room which is in direct eye path of the entry way. That was easily explained by my mopping. However, Zack shows up in only a shirt and diaper (even though he had gone downstairs to play full dressed) so this new neighbor gets to not only see my house in disarray, but my three year old strutting his unpotty-trained self about in a diaper. This woman also has four children, including a three year old who is just days younger than Zack and I just hope and pray he is unpotty-trained too, but alas, most likely he is in underpants. Fortunately, because she also has four children close in age as mine (although her oldest is nine and the three year old is her youngest) she did not give me the same look of disapproval that a mother of one or none would have given me.

Oh, but let me not forget to mention that while I was having an awkward get to know you, which involved me trying to explain why my furniture was in the wrong rooms, why we have a crack from water damage in our ceiling, why my three year old is unintelligible and unpotty trained, I ALSO get to try to referee Zack and Andrew who are sword fighting with a broom and a mop and really giving each other good beatings and are in tears. It was definitely not a moment worthy of Mother of the Year nominations. I felt like I was on a sitcom, however, much as I hate to admit it, all problems were not resolved within 30 minutes.

Once the neighbor left, probably to have a good laugh once she turned the corner, I resumed the kitchen cleaning. Finally, after returning the kitchen furniture into the kitchen, I was able to admire the hour and a half of hard work (and embarrassment). The three children were downstairs in the basement and Mylie was up napping in her crib, so I thought it was safe if I had a brief bathroom break. No sooner than had I made myself unavailable, I hear Andrew's whiny tattle drifting from the kitchen, "Zack is pouring all of the milk onto the floor!!!" This was nails on the chalkboard to my ears. What was I to do? All I could do was start yelling at them from the bathroom at the top of my lungs things that would have left me unsurprised to find child services at my front door.

As soon as I make it to the kitchen, I find Andrew watching the contents of a full gallon of milk (purchased the evening before) careening down our, sadly unlevel, kitchen floor to whatever crevices it could find to pour into and cause further damage. Zachary, it seems, is startled by my sudden entrance and quickly puts down the milk carton. I scream for Maddie and Andrew to get me some towels as I try to lie myself out across the floor (sacrificing my freshly laundered jeans) in an attempt to dam the flood (yes, I said dam the flood, because I had already DAMNED the flood from the bathroom).

Rather than getting the towels, Maddie has been side tracked by finding Mylie in her crib. Mylie's crib is within eyesight of the linen closet when the bedroom door is open. So, as I was saying, rather than bringing down the towels, she brings down Mylie. Now, I am drenched in 2%, unable to move for fear of the milk accessing gaps beneath the baseboard and the stench the rotten milk between the floor and basement ceiling will make, while I watch Mylie slip-sliding and sloshing through the milk. I am shouting at Maddie to get Mylie, and Maddie is yelling at me that she can only do one things at a time and that she's getting towels. Andrew is moving slower than I previously believed to be humanly possible in the direction of towels and instead returns with three paper towels. At this point, Mylie slips on the milk, is drenched, and is screaming bloody murder (which is precisely what the neighbors must imagine is taking place) and Zack realizes I am semi-trapped, locks his eyes with mine, picks up the milk carton again, and shakes out the last remaining inch.

I can't even begin to fathom the foolishness of the statement "No use crying over spilled milk." So, once again, allow me to reiterate that I DO clean my kitchen floor often. However, I can't turn my little androids off, and they outnumber me four to one.

Zachary entered sunbeams (the 3 year old class in our church) and I sure pity that teacher. Not only does she have Zack, but also four other BOYS. There are no girls in the class. Of the five boys, even though Zack has a birthday of October 27, he is the second OLDEST in the class. Also, only two at most of these five boys are potty trained and absolutely none of them will sit still.

On the bright side for me and Ben, Mylie is entering the world of nursery this week at church. It is a week early, but the three of us will be much happier when she's in there. I'm hoping she transitions in easily.

Well, as much as I would like to keep venting the frustrations of my inadequacies in the realms of parenting and cleaning, I am surveying my bedroom and the dozens of things that are still out from the bathroom and closet and are looking for a special organized area to call home. As you read this from your gleaming, shiny clean homes, think of me...