TMI Tuesday: Who Knew Cleaning Was So Much Fun

Our Son's New Toy!

My wife and I entered the childcare search with a little trepidation not really knowing how to approach the process. We have already found a great daycare in the area but there are times when we would like to get out for the evening or have someone at the house when either the daycare is closed or when our son is home sick. While we know that our family is there whenever we need them, we can’t expect them to make the long drive out to us all of the time. We also have a number of people that we know in closer proximity but that is where the allergy part of the equation comes into play… our home needs to remain free of cats (and their dander), nuts, and shellfish.

In the responses that we received through Care.com there were a number of them that pretty much disqualified themselves simply in how they responded to our posting. Some didn’t bother reading what we had written (to the point of addressing their communication to some other name entirely), others had no business in childcare, a few wanted us to pay them for dropping our son off at their house, and others touted their love of animals of all kinds (see the first noted disqualifier). As for the other, thankfully, my wife’s background has been tremendously helpful in weeding out some of the “candidates”.

It took some time but finally we came across someone with a background that we were looking for, the clearances we were requiring, and a personality that matched well with our family. Despite our son’s grumpy sleepiness, this initial impression was proven correct when we met with her last week. As a bonus, she was also willing to take on the chore of cleaning our home on a weekly basis eliminating our need to conduct a second search. Sometimes things seem to just fall into place.

Not wanting to waste any time, and also wanting to get a handle on the cleaning, we had her start this past weekend to see how she would interact without our son and how our son would interact with her. After only a few minutes it was as if they had known one another all along and our son even “helped” her clean a little following close behind with a duster double checking her work and pushing his “vacuum” back and forth across the play room taking care all of the spots she missed. More importantly, he was comfortable having her around and the two of them played and read together for much of the morning which allowed my wife and I to take care of some organizing around the kitchen.

It took some time to find someone but sometimes you have to wait for the right opportunity to come about to find that perfect fit for your family. Fortunately, I also had a copy of his baby book on hand to get her up to speed! Looks like things may work out and we should have some time for ourselves moving forward and a clean house every week which will allow us to spend more quality time with our little boy on the weekends. And that is well worth the extra expense of having someone come in once a week.

A means to get the care giver up to speed!

In Need Of A Deep Cleaning

One of the things that always seems to be put off for another day is cleaning. It is safe to say that it is our least favorite thing to do so naturally we keep saying tomorrow or next weekend. It is that pattern that has gotten us to where we are now… living in a bit of a mess.

It really isn’t the dust or dirt that is the issue as that can be remedied with a Swiffer and a vacuum. What really gets me is when I can’t find the things that I am looking for because everything is laying in disorganized piles cluttering up my desk or crammed in the draw so tight that I am unable to flip through the files. When I can’t find things I tend to leave them in the land of lost and forgotten papers… only when something is truly important do I continue searching until I find it. However, that brings an important question to the forefront… is it worth keeping if it isn’t important enough to keep searching?

More often than not, this simple question leads to an overdue sifting when I toss those former trees into the shred box. Ah, the shred box, there is hours of work that I really don’t have the time of patience to deal with which is why, every so often, I wind up throwing everything into a trash bag and heading off to Staples with a coupon in hand. I think it might be time to look for another one of those coupons.

If you couldn’t tell, when my work space becomes disorganized my thoughts and my free writing tends to become very loose and sometimes completely disorganized in and of itself. Even now, if you couldn’t tell, my mind seems a bit jumbled and I am finding it hard to stay focused on the task at hand. With every passing word of this post I am thinking about the fifty other things that I have to get done, the things that I need to organize, and the question as to when I am going to have the time to do them.

Maybe it is a little OCD of me to be having these thoughts and these issues with my focus. I don’t know. But, needless to say, there are a lot of things that are going through my mind at this moment some of which I have already written about and others that have yet to make it into the blog. Maybe if I can get organized and put everything in an order that makes some semblance of sense, I will get everything in my mind written in posts and up on this blog. I guess time will only tell.

Sunday: The Complete Opposite Of Saturday

Name that movie (before he became Batman)...

I know I have written about this before but it has been some time since I last approached the subject and that is because of the simple reason that I hate cleaning. However, there comes a time when you just look around and you have no other choice but to pull out the vacuum, prep the Swiffer, and knock off all the crud from the bottom of the broom. Sunday was that time for me when I could feel the dirt on the bottom of my socks and I could see the coating of dust on the coffee table.

With other things on my plate for the day, it was by no means a deep cleaning (that will have to be done at a later time) but I was at least able to clear off a couple of the tables and pile all of the miscellaneous crap into one consolidated area. Yesterday was all about reducing the coverage of the clutter rather than eliminating the mass of the mess. So now, everything has been shoved to one side or another and neatly stacked in sortable piles which I am sure will sit for at least another week before being touched.

Once these things are taken care of it will be time to vacuum the entire apartment. This is not going to be one of those quick pass type jobs, this is going to be an all-day process with multiple passes, numerous bag changes, and a follow up Swiffer to take care of all the fine dust kicked up throughout the marathon. That is the part that I am really not looking forward to. Everything else is bearably, it’s that vacuuming that is a royal PITA.

At least when you are sorting through piles on tables you have the occasional moment of “I forgot we had that” or “I was wondering where I put that”. Vacuuming does not throw in those moments of relief. You are not going to reminisce about a Dorito that you had a month ago that bounced under the sofa only to be found by the bristles and suction of your Hoover. It just doesn’t work that way, at least not for me.

So I guess you could say that round one is done with the longer, more exhausting, rounds to go. While I am not looking forward to the process, I can’t wait for the end result when we return to a state of maintenance rather than recovery. Until we get to that point it is a matter of returning to cleanliness and working on the maintenance schedule that will immediately follow. I guess we will see how that holds up.