Clean floors make me smile. I love it when my carpets are well-vaccumed, my bathrooms floors are free of gunk, and my treasured pine floors are conditioned. I feel like they are smiling at me so I smile right back.
Now, you gotta understand something about me and cleanliness. I'll own up to disliking clutter and messiness but I am not the poster child for household management. My motto regarding housework is"Lower your expectations". Good enough is good enough for me. Cleanliness? Well, isn't that why we keep up to date on tetanus shots? I have friends whom I dearly admire (ok, and secretly envy) whose homes rival the surgical floor of ARMC. It is a delight to drop in on them and appreciate their dust-free ceiling fans and cobweb-less chandeliers. Heck, their silverware drawers probably don't even have crumbs in them! Really!
Lower standards work for me. I can happily use a windfall of free time reading a book or baking granola or calling my Mom - the splatters on the microwave don't make me feel one bit guilty. (Speaking of Mom, she will clean those splatters when she visits anyhow. This way, I give her something to do. Actually, when I think about it, I am not lazy at all. Instead, I am really being thoughtful, Kind. To make my Mom feel so appreciated. I am glad about this. Told you this worked for me).
Also, not having high expectations means I am perfectly happy to delegate. Yes, the infamous chore chart. Kids do the work. All in the name of child-training, you understand. And I am happy with fairly mediocre performance. (None of my kids follow this blog so I think I can get away with that...)
All that said, clean floors make me smile. I don't know what it is about a clean floor that makes me happy. (Good thing that's not the only source of my joy...) And I had been frowning for quite some time at the floor in the kids' bathroom. It didn't even meet my low expectations. Been this way for, well, I am not secure enough to admit how many different kids have been assigned this bathroom and for how long, so just know that the floor was really bad. They all insisted they had scrubbed and scrubbed and this was the best it could look. Well, tonight I had a windfall of free time, no current book to read, trying not to eat so much granola and had already talked to my Mom...soooooooooo I took a stab at it.
Turns out the kids were right. I used every cleaner in my arsenal and untold amounts of elbow grease and not much progress showed. Oh well. Default to the low expectations. Rejoicing that my self-esteem didn't take a hit from the green nail polish on that floor, I went on about my business.
Short while later, my knight in shining armor came through with something he called solvent (???) and said Betsy told him I couldn't get the floor clean so he thought he'd try this.
You can now turn as green as that nail polish, envying not only my clean bathroom floor but also that tall,dark and handsome man that lets me share his name.....and knows what "solvent" is.
I am just smiling. At my floors. And at him.
Now, you gotta understand something about me and cleanliness. I'll own up to disliking clutter and messiness but I am not the poster child for household management. My motto regarding housework is"Lower your expectations". Good enough is good enough for me. Cleanliness? Well, isn't that why we keep up to date on tetanus shots? I have friends whom I dearly admire (ok, and secretly envy) whose homes rival the surgical floor of ARMC. It is a delight to drop in on them and appreciate their dust-free ceiling fans and cobweb-less chandeliers. Heck, their silverware drawers probably don't even have crumbs in them! Really!
Lower standards work for me. I can happily use a windfall of free time reading a book or baking granola or calling my Mom - the splatters on the microwave don't make me feel one bit guilty. (Speaking of Mom, she will clean those splatters when she visits anyhow. This way, I give her something to do. Actually, when I think about it, I am not lazy at all. Instead, I am really being thoughtful, Kind. To make my Mom feel so appreciated. I am glad about this. Told you this worked for me).
Also, not having high expectations means I am perfectly happy to delegate. Yes, the infamous chore chart. Kids do the work. All in the name of child-training, you understand. And I am happy with fairly mediocre performance. (None of my kids follow this blog so I think I can get away with that...)
All that said, clean floors make me smile. I don't know what it is about a clean floor that makes me happy. (Good thing that's not the only source of my joy...) And I had been frowning for quite some time at the floor in the kids' bathroom. It didn't even meet my low expectations. Been this way for, well, I am not secure enough to admit how many different kids have been assigned this bathroom and for how long, so just know that the floor was really bad. They all insisted they had scrubbed and scrubbed and this was the best it could look. Well, tonight I had a windfall of free time, no current book to read, trying not to eat so much granola and had already talked to my Mom...soooooooooo I took a stab at it.
Turns out the kids were right. I used every cleaner in my arsenal and untold amounts of elbow grease and not much progress showed. Oh well. Default to the low expectations. Rejoicing that my self-esteem didn't take a hit from the green nail polish on that floor, I went on about my business.
Short while later, my knight in shining armor came through with something he called solvent (???) and said Betsy told him I couldn't get the floor clean so he thought he'd try this.
You can now turn as green as that nail polish, envying not only my clean bathroom floor but also that tall,dark and handsome man that lets me share his name.....and knows what "solvent" is.
I am just smiling. At my floors. And at him.