If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then I must be in a Barcalounger next to Satan.  Not because I don’t try, really, I feel like every day I am on an uphill battle to keep my house neat, clean and organized.  I just keep sliding down that hill getting dirt where it shouldn’t be, mostly because I have two children, three if you count my husband.  Once I get everyone out the door in the morning, I turn around and my house looks like a war zone.  How does this happen?  This never happened to my mother.

I grew up in an immaculate home where dust was never allowed to visit.  My mother is an Italian Greek woman (wonderful combination, yummy foods always) that would literally have your glass washed, dried and put away before you even realized you had taken the last sip.  As an adult, sometimes I stop by her home unexpectedly just to see if I could find a pillow askew or a dust bunny hopping around, but no, never is anything out of place or dirty.  So you think that might have rubbed off on me, right?  Not so much.

I have been much better about at least keeping the first floor presentable.  However, it is only presentable during the hours of 10:00 – 3:00 while my children are at school.  Once my family comes home all bets are off.  The upstairs is permanently off limits because that’s where I hide all of the items I don’t know what to do with on the first floor.  Why do I have those items?  Why can’t I figure out where they should go?  Why can’t I be that person that has a place for everything and everything in it’s place.  I got a label maker thinking maybe that would help with organization.  Yeah, well I probably should have labeled the label maker because I can’t remember where I put it.

I like to think that it is because I live in an older home with very small closets.  My mother’s house is older and has fewer closets, damn that woman.  I dream of living in a huge house with walk in closets everywhere filled with labeled organized bins.  I would have to buy a new label maker but it would be worth it.  Unfortunately, in the town I live in to afford such a home I would have to sell most of my organs and at least one child.  With a larger home comes more area to clean though.  More windows, which is not something I choose to clean, ever.  If they get dirty I either move, or think of it as a nice surprise when you walk outside and see that it is actually sunny out.  I love surprises.

There are some things in my home that I don’t even notice anymore.  My dogs scratch at our family room door when they need to go outside.  The paint is mostly gone where they scratch but instead of re-painting the door, I have started to look at it as a way my dogs express themselves, kind of like art.  It makes me feel better about the fact that it will probably be like that for years.  I could say that all of this happens because I live such an overscheduled life, but I’m starting to think that I might just be lazy, shhh, don’t tell my mom she was right.