Off My Noodle

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Secret Blessings of a Messy House

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I just can’t relate to mothers who manage to keep their homes immaculate and —adding insult to injury—organized, without a housekeeper on round-the-clock duty. Once my kids troop through the door, they dive-bomb their backpacks, hurl their shoes toward their next of kin, and hurtle toward the kitchen with paint-stained fingers, demanding snacks. 

In my haste to combat these pint-sized chaos creators, I try to catch the flying sweaters like an outfielder, swoop low to gather the shoes they have kicked off, and simultaneously court a hernia from trying to heft a backpack that weighs nearly as much as the kid sentenced to bring it to school every day.

It’s tough on my ego, but I know several mothers whose homes are immaculate, even without household help.  One is my sister-in-law, a mom of three who inadvertently pained me to my Pilates-trained core when she announced that in her spare time she had become a home organizer. When she visits my house, she scans the premises with an upraised brow and blithely offers, “If you need any help tidying up, just let me know.”

I was never slovenly, mind you. In my life BC-Before Children- how hard could it have been to find my own bank statements? After all, no small and sticky hands had absconded with them to create a fleet of paper airplanes soaring around the house, eventually crash landing behind a bunk bed. Before children, linens stayed folded neatly in the closet; now, they morph into tents over dining room chairs, or are draped over various small but cute people, making them look like miniature Klan members.

For sanity’s sake, I had to allow my cleanliness and organizational standards to fall with each additional child. When I had three kids, I was hugely entertained watching a panicked first-time mom snatch a pacifier from her baby, who had dropped it on a freshly vacuumed carpet. I rushed from the room to laugh hysterically in private while the mom sent the pacifier to the Centers for Disease Control. 

Using our handy pacifier example above, here’s how my litmus test of “clean” evolved as I had my first through fourth children. Assume that the pacifier fell not on a freshly vacuumed carpet, but on a kitchen floor that would have benefited from a close encounter with a broom and mop.

First child: Grab the pacifier and wash with gentle dishwashing detergent. Immerse cleaned pacifier in boiling water and cook until al dente. Open new pacifier and sterilize with remaining boiled water. 

Second child: Rinse the dropped pacifier under whatever temperature water flows from the tap, return to baby.

Third child: Swipe dropped pacifier on the back of my skirt, toss back to baby.

Fourth and additional children: Say, “Thanks, Hannah, for picking up that dirt clod from the floor with your pacifier. What a good girl!”

Over time, scientists proved that my relaxed-fit cleanliness standards were even healthy. News reports claimed that our over-sanitized environments were lowering our kids’ resistance to bacteria, actually making them more prone to getting sick! Oh, how I savored my feelings of revenge on my Purell-toting sister-in-law and all her ilk! Before long I stopped worrying altogether about the flotsam and jetsam that disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle of the family room couch, including the creative composting of last season’s cherry pits, dirty socks (MIA), and Popsicle sticks with the jokes still readable (but still not funny).

Fortunately, young children, in their innocence and naivete, are eager to help clean up. When my oldest son was eighteen months old, he toddled over to get the broom and tried to sweep. With a newborn in my arms, I thought that this could be the start of something beautiful. From that time until he got wise to the concept of child labor exploitation, (age 3), my eldest son swept the floor, and didn’t do a bad job, really.

Allowing kids to clean teaches responsibility, and while the actual cleanliness level may suffer, your child’s self-esteem could skyrocket. Once, an insensitive dinner guest asked, “Is that a smudge on this soup bowl?”

“No!” I replied too forcefully, maternal protection engines fully engaged. “Daniel cleaned the bowl all by himself. What looks like a smudge is really a holographic with his name. Just like with paper bags, where it says ‘Inspected by Miranda.’ This holographic means the bowl was carefully and expertly washed by Daniel!” 

Messes and disorganization have other benefits, even crime deterrence. I believe that Legos, strewn strategically over the floor, are a smarter investment than the most sophisticated alarm system. Any experienced criminal can pick a lock; some can even hack through an alarm system, but I defy one to stumble over 4,927 Lego pieces without tripping on his face or swearing loudly enough to alert the authorities. Hey, you can’t break into houses with a sprained ankle.

While I made peace with a muddled house, though, I could never abide my kids crossing that line between graham cracker-lips cute and outright grubbiness. But with three boys, this hasn’t been easy. At least my daughter can’t wait to jump in the tub, preferably under three feet of soap bubbles, but by the time I can haul her out, she resembles a giant raisin.

My boys look forward to baths like a taxpayer enjoys an IRS audit. “Why should I take a bath?” asks one son. “I’m just going to get dirty again!”

“Why eat?,” I parry. “You’re just going to get hungry again! Why sleep? You’re just going to get tired again!”

My logic is wasted on him. Boys don’t care even when they emit powerful and embarrassing body stench, or when they are so begrimed that they look as if they have just stepped from a coal mine. Once I bought a microscope so I could prove their filth quotient to them under the unforgiving magnification of the microscope. This, too, backfired spectacularly. They were immensely proud of their status as fungus farmers.

One of the most frightening sights I ever saw was when one of my sons, then 10, returned from a week-long visit with out-of-town relatives. I had carefully packed his clothing, with plenty of clean underwear and socks, and told him to put his dirty laundry in the laundry bag. When I opened his suitcase, his laundry bag had a lonely pair of mud-caked jeans and two shirts decorated with hardened spaghetti sauce. But the underwear, every last pair, was still clean.

No, boys don’t get this business about being clean until they are interested in girls, at which point moms like me will pine for the days when they were happy to be dirty all the time, and my house’s decor could only be described as “Early Lego.”

 

Posted by judy @ 11:29 AM • (12) Comments