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My mother tells me I used to wake up in the middle of the night and clean my room. This? Does not bode well for motherhood. Hi, my name is Rita, and I'm a Type A mother when it comes to housekeeping.
Since my daughter entered kindergarten, I've relaxed my standards a bit for her room. I still dust it and vacuum it every week, and I try to force her to make her bed each morning. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn't. With extreme effort, I try not to nag. But I can't stop myself from sneaking into her room and making her bed. (*twitches*)
I think she's inherited (from nature or nurture?) some of my quirks. She'll spend a half hour rearranging her snowglobe collection, and I often walk into her room to find she's taken everything off her shelves and made a Nordstrom window display in the middle of the floor.
Fortunately for me, my husband is into cleaning, too. We clean every week, though I've had to give up on taking everything off the shelves to dust that often. (I used to.)
I got a lot of it from my mom, who gave us chores either to keep us busy or because she really wanted every chair leg in the house dusted -- at this point, I'm not sure which is which.
I've also struggled as a parent with how much to push on the cleanliness front. I don't want to nag or send the message there's something wrong with her if her room isn't always picked up, but I also don't want to -- no, can't -- live with visual chaos. A cluttered room makes me physically twitchy. I used to clean my apartment when I stayed home sick from work because I couldn't actually be sick in a messy environment. I can't really relax when things aren't tucked away where I can't really see them. What's inside those shelves doesn't bother me nearly as much as what's on the floor.
What does this mean for her? Probably that she'll rebel and be a complete slob after she moves out, at least for a period of time. It's my hope that she'll learn to love the scent of clean sheets, that she'll be able to lift her mood with a vacuum cleaner, but I realize that a clean house does not make for a better person. There are variations of "clean" that are certainly acceptable, and every time I wander into her room and see the sticky clay sculptures she brought home from daycare still sitting on her bookshelf, I tuck my hands under my armpits to keep myself from throwing them away. They are so messy, and they totally don't go with the colors of her room, either.
I realize how bad this sounds. Believe me, the self-awareness of my persnickety ways is torture enough.
But I've always been like this. I come by it honestly. Some people don't see the value in spending time cleaning, and I can't stop myself from doing it. I don't think it matters which you do, but I hope that my daughter will see my need to buy a basket in which to store every pile of her school papers isn't a reflection on her but on me. I like her papers, really I do, but my Lord, I must organize them the minute they come out of her backpack or she will have to watch her dear mother devolve into a nervous wreck.
I try to combat her future therapy by telling her it will be fun to organize her things together. So far, she's buying it. Stay tuned for her painting her walls black and storing used food wrappers under her bed as a teenager.
Related Reading:
* I clean, so you don't have to
* When the house is a mess
* Choose your own adventure: housecleaning
If you're a bit of a neat freak, leave your link here. If you're not... visit Sarah's post and leave your link there.
