La Dolce Vita is Italian for 'The Good Life'. This is what I strive for every day. I strive for happiness, balance, fun and love. Here you will read about my insights and struggles and how I try to deal with life's challenges in a way that improves my life, the life of my friends and family and of my children.
Help. My house is a mess
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I always thought I’d live in a clean and tidy house. It may not be the nicest house on the street but I’d be damned if it wasn’t clean and tidy at all times. I imagined clean benches, a pretty glass cake holder with a freshly baked cake in it (that I didn’t eat myself because I was skinny, pretty and aging freakishly well) and there were no toys on the floor, no laundry waiting to be done and no kiss marks on my window from where I kissed goodbye to my kids.
Then I woke up.
My house is a mess. Most days it looks like we’ve been robbed. The thieves didn’t find anything they wanted to take but they used every bowl in the cupboard to eat cereal, took all the clothes out of the draws looking for long pants/stockings/clean undies...
I try to clean. I do! But when I clean the house looks good for a maximum of a couple of hours. Then I’m left there looking around in dismay wondering why I bothered. I can’t even smell the Mr Sheen anymore!
I did a big cupboard clean a couple of weeks ago and that afternoon I felt like the perfect reluctant-housewife/stay-at-home-mum/unpaid-cleaner in the world. I felt happy, free and deserving of my sit down in front of Ellen with a hot cup of coffee. The reality is that I feel guilty when I watch Ellen and I rarely get to finish the coffee. When did my life become an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond?
My friend cleans her house every morning. She gets up at 5am, cleans, gets the kids ready for school and off they go. She comes home to a clean house. Through her tired and puffy eyes she sees a home at its best. I try to get up early (6am) but usually turn the alarm off and sleep in or press snooze (as though those nine extra minutes will refresh me enough for some early morning cleaning).
Another friend has a weekly cleaning team and while she concedes that later in the day it looks like they haven’t even been, SHE knows the bathroom and toilet have been scrubbed and she has the fond memory of her house looking good for a little while.
Mums I know with older children delegate various chores and I look forward to my children being old enough to clean and actually help. They want to help now. Giovanni who is four loves to vacuum but he also likes to suck up large objects, leaving me to spend thirty precious cleaning minutes unblocking the vacuum cleaner. Caterina who is three loves to polish the furniture with Mr Sheen but screams if I don’t let her have a turn at spraying it and gets bored half way through, leaving me to finish the job.
My son Philip is good at packing away toys when offered ice cream at the end of it. But the novelty wears off for him, as it does for us all.
I read recently that a house is never cleaned as well as when guests are coming so maybe my problem is that I don’t invite enough people over. If I schedule a dinner every Friday night I can spend the day cleaning and enjoy a full night of my house looking they way I want it to...and at least when I clean up after then I can eat leftovers.
Cake anyone?
How tidy is your home and how important is it to you that your house is clean and tidy?
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