Cleaning is the bane of my existence

I hate cleaning. I really enjoy the feeling I get when something is all shiny and clean and pretty, but the actual cleaning to get to that point bites. I once had a job as a maid at a motel. Yah, that lasted all of one week. I don't like cleaning up my own mess, cleaning up other peoples was just too much. It didn't help that the week I worked just happened to coincide with two major festivals in my home town, the annual Elvis festival and a huge Harley Bike show. Do you know how disgusting Elvii can be? *shudder*

When it was just me and the Hubs, I was actually pretty good at keeping our house clean. We had two dogs and two cat's so I ended up vacuuming and sweeping a whole heck of a lot, but it wasn't too bad. I did laundry once a week and put it right away.

When I got pregnant with the Sprogling I ended up spending nearly three months sitting on my ass doing pretty much nothing because I was no longer working or going to school and I felt like hell warmed over. During that time it was really easy to let the dishes slide or to just smell check clothes until there were none left that didn't have a pong.

Now that I have two kids, I totally use them as an excuse to not clean. See, no one else in my limited family/friends that are willing to babysit group can handle both of them. I actually had a friend babysit then for a day and after two years of begging her boyfriend to let them start a family she texted him saying that she no longer wanted kids. I got a heartfelt thank you from her boyfriend. But the fact remains that when everyone else has my kids they experience the full effect and they forgive me a multitude of things because they can't imagine having to cook and clean while juggling both the kids. The truth is that I can manage them. I have more practice.

I sometimes just don't wanna do the floors for the tenth time that day. Or wipe up yet more yogurt from the floor. It just gets tiring. They both make sooo much mess and it take all my time to just keep on par with them. So some days my husband comes home to a sparkly clean house, and others he comes home to a place that looks like I rented it out to the local junk yard. The days that my cleaning sucks, I totally blame it on the kids. "Oh, the Sprogling didn't nap today! There's no way I could have done the dishes when he didn't nap!" or "Little Bit was super clingy and I think another tooth is coming in. I just couldn't do the vacuuming when she wanted to nurse all day."

Yah. Not exactly a good thing to do, using your children as excuses. But something I plan on doing as long as I can possibly manage it.