I may have told my friend an inadvertent lie. She came to visit me from Arkansas a couple of weeks ago. She was only here for an hour or so, but in that time I told her that it was possible to keep a neat house even with a baby in the home. I hope I followed that statement up with the truth that you'll make the time to put things away if that is something that's important to you. Sometimes I succeed in this, and sometimes I do not.
For the past few weeks I have not succeeded. It is frustrating to realize that cleaning up the kitchen and the highchair really is a never ending process.
5 comments:
Oh, you big hypocrite! ;-)
Hang in there. Parker will quickly get old enough that you can teach him to clean up after himself.
I recently played the video game "The Sims." It's incredibly addictive, so I have had to put the game away. BUt, it taught me something that it rather obvious, but I'd never realized it in such stark terms:
Life requires a LOT of maintainance.
It does, doesn't it. So now I have another question for another post.
Whoa, I've really got to fix that post. There are all kinds of typos in it that I've made worse by trying to fix.
Fixing it now.
I agree that life takes a lot of maintenance. I've also found that having kids help clean up usually takes longer than doing it myself, but I do it anyway because I consider it part of their training in life skills, plus an opportunity to not see mom as the household slave.
The way I handle this is to try to find the most efficient way to do something that I need to do over and over, and then do the task immediately when it needs to be done, instead of letting it pile up--to do things in little immediate bursts of energy. I try to do those routine things quickly and sufficiently, but not thoroughly. I've let perfectionistic tendencies drop, and lowered standards on things I don't really care about, to free up time for things I do care about.
Example: I slapdash my bed made right after I get up most days. It doesn't look like something from a magazine, but it's good enough. The kids need to make their own beds, which usually means the comforter hanging off at an odd angle, but I'm starting to like the look! I don't want to come back after them and re-do it. It really is hard for them to reach!
What we have Charlie do is very minimal (he's not quite 2). We have him pick up toys and drop them into a bin. We have him throw away a piece of trash. We have him bring us his shoes when it's time to go outside.
Today he even unloaded a couple of kids dishes and bowls for me (unbreakable) from the dishwasher and put them in the ground-level cupboard. He also handed adult-sized plastic cups to me to put in the upper cupboard. He sees his brother and sister do it every morning (they tagteam unload the dishes), so he was so pleased with himself to do it, too!
Drat. I wish I would have read Jamey's comment here before I commented on the post immediately above this one. I agree, and I would probably have not have added anything of my own if I'd read what she said.
"...an opportunity to not see mom as the household slave." That's so funny and right on the money. It's so easy for kids to get accustomed to being waited on hand and foot because there are so many things they aren't able to do for themselves for the first part of their lives.
Jim, that's your second "Drat" comment after you read what I wrote. The other one was in the email ping-pong about the hospitality predicament.
But don't let that stop you from commenting yourself--you can always write "I agree with the wisdom of my elder sister once again," or something in that vein. ha! 'Round here, we jokingly say "You're right as always," which is funny only because we continually tell anyone when we think they're wrong. Although after discussion we sometimes realize we were mistaken.
BTW, "drat" is such an endearing word. It makes me think of a Batman comic.
Also, I was raised to kind of see mom as the household slave. The only problem is that NOW when something needs to be done, I look around for "mom" to do it, then I realize "I" am now "mom." Zikes!
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