Labory Day

I'm not sure what Labor Day is even for. Is it a day FREE from Labor? Or a day to celebrate those who labor (which is everyone, right?)? Or is it a day to do more labor? Because that's how it usually turns out, it seems. And this year was no exception. My parents in law are moving. They found a big house in a nice area. But the house needs a little work. So I spent most of Saturday and most of yesterday, Labor Day, at the new house cleaning, vacuuming, scrubbing, sweeping, priming and painting. And guess what? I LOVED it. You may think I'm weird (and my husband may think I'm lying), but I'm actually a clean person. I enjoy clean. And more importantly, I enjoy the process of making things clean and orderly, especially when working with a blank slate, like a new house. I know it's hard to tell when you walk in my house; my house doesn't look like I'm a particularly clean person. But normal every day life poses 3 problems that prevent me from doing my cleaning best: 1) I have two small kids who make messes faster than I can clean them up. 2) Most cleaning jobs take a good chunk of time to do. 20 minutes, 45 minutes, even a couple of hours to do a thorough job on some areas. And anyone with toddlers will tell you, the maximum amount of time you can get to yourself, undisturbed is 15 minutes, and that's if you put on a REALLY absorbing movie for them. Without the movie, that turns into 2-5 minutes of uninterupted time, max. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting down to do a big cleaning project (sorting through boxes shoved into a closet, organizing piles of papers on the desk, cleaning out the fridge, etc.) only to have to get up to help one or the other child 15,000 times in that 45 minute period, which has now stretched to a 5 hour period because of the interruptions. Anyone with kids knows that it is almost a lost cause to try to do big cleaning projects. Because as you get up from cleaning the fridge to, say, blow someone's nose, you'll notice that the tissues are all out, go to the basement to get another box and realize you need to start a new load of laundry, go upstairs to get the new laundry and notice that your 1 year old has unraveled an entire roll of toilet paper onto the bathroom floor (I took this example from today, by the way), so you start cleaning that up until your 3 year old comes to say she needs a snack, etc. Meanwhile, the fridge never got finished and the food you set out while you were cleaning it is all warm and spoiled now. You never got back to your project like you thought you would. So I just get fed up even trying to do these big projects knowing I will never get through them and they'll end up half-assed or worse than before. 3) I'm pretty sure most moms would agree that cleaning the same things over and over gets monotonous, boring, and downright maddening. Even being a person who enjoys cleaning, I could just scream when I have to scrape my son's breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and treat all up off the floor under his high chair, day after day. Or when I have to sweep the sand off the kitchen floor for the 18th time today as the kids track it in from the sand box. Or when I have to pick up the same toys on the living room floor that I already cleaned up half a dozen times today. So it may appear that I don't care about cleanliness, when that is not the case. It IS the case that frustration often wins out when it comes to the fruitlessness of cleaning the same messes for the one millionth time this week. So those are the 3 reasons my house may not be a good indicator that I love to clean. Now back to my story--Labor Day and why I enjoyed the cleaning and painting. The answer is that I took away all 3 reasons that cleaning my own house is usually so maddening to me: Kids, kids, and kids. I got to work, uninterrupted, for hours on end. I got to see the fruits of my labors. My work was not unraveled at a greater speed than I could produce it. I left the house at the end of the day with two bathroom cabinets primed and ready for painting, the main floor and upper floors vacuumed, the window ledges dust free, the holes in the walls spackled, sanded, and repainted, two other rooms completely painted...do you see where I'm heading with this? Cleaning and organizing is FUN when I can actually make things beautiful, clean, and better than they were before. So I think I'm going to make it a Labor Day tradition fron now on to find a nice big project of labor to work on, find someone to watch my kids, and go to town. It may not be the purpose that Labor Day was created for originally. But I can't think of any better way to celebrate it.


(For the court's consideration, I'd like to submit evidence in the form of exibits A, B, C, and D, which all took place during the 20 minutes it took me to write this blog entry. Now just imagine if I'd been actually working!)

Exibit A (Toilet paper unraveled, toilet paper roll still missing)

Exibit B (breakfast cereal, bowl, and spoon strewn onto floor)

Exibit C (Remains of "breadtoast" left in play kitchen rather than real kitchen)

Exibit D (Baby decided to "laloo" on the table AND his hand. Red marker not yet recovered. Still in danger of creating bigger mess.)