The Cleaning Lady Crazy

I try as often as I can to maintain routines in my house. I believe that life is much smoother with the sequence of daily events being pre-discussed before being carried out with our little ones.

Just this week, my younger son’s preschool teacher sent out a sweet reminder on this very subject. It read:

“Children develop best in an environment of order and consistency.  They are happier when they know what to expect.  To a young child, a predictable world is a safe world. By setting up regular, reliable times and procedures for daily events, parents provide a dependable environment.”

Routines are great. It is because of them that our weekday mornings are relatively predictable, despite the oft-dissenting votes from my older children to go to school. But overall, each morning my kids have grown to count on warm chocolate Ovaltine, a seat on the heater with a blanket to warm up with, doting cuddles from mom, plenty of breakfast choices and a ton of help and hustle getting out the door for school. Although we have our hiccups, it all runs pretty smoothly in our house during the week.

But one day every other week, all routine, order and consistency are thrown out the window -- along with a million other untraceable knick-knacks that have accumulated on every surface since the last time the cleaning ladies came.

I feel very fortunate that I have cleaning ladies to come and scrub down our house every other Monday morning. But at times, the work it takes to prepare for the cleaning ladies’ descend is more than I can bear.

With three kids, keeping up with the house is a feat all its own.  It is a constant battle to put things away on an hourly basis, but alas that Sunday night before our Monday “disinfecting,” something scary comes over me.

I look around contemplating and panicking about how late I am going to be up after the kids go down. All of a sudden the numerous piles I have been able to ignore for close to two weeks become fluorescent, and I am totally unable to ignore those annoyingly highlighted areas begging to be organized.  And they’re everywhere! My mind races with the items I see. Loose pieces of the kids’ art work, a few random envelopes of mail, the weekly issue of Time magazine that I am always unable to finish, random headbands and stickers, pens without tops, pieces of toys that have gone missing … the potpourri of odds and ends is putrid. (And that’s not counting the multiple piles of unfolded clean laundry I was able to complete over the weekend but found no time to fold.) I dart around agitatedly putting things away, all the while staring at stuffed drawers and closets, magnifying my disorganization and clutter. The fight seems futile.

But I must make the most of my two-week cleaning and so I struggle that Sunday night and early Monday morning, finding a home for every random little thing – many times in the garbage can.

Once they’ve come and the house is once again calm, I certainly do feel the freedom and satisfaction of having all three toilets cleaned at once, especially with a toddler recently potty trained and two others who are also mastering their aim. I love the feeling of an empty and fresh countertop awaiting my random pile of the week, or day, rather. I am not sure if they do a better job than I could, but they are certainly more efficient and I feel like a pampered Mommy that Monday.

There was a time when my kids verbalized their disliking for the cleaning ladies. They would moan and groan whenever I mentioned they were coming. After having several discussions about how these nice ladies really help out Mommy, I only recently figured out why they felt that way. The kids are hip to the new routine that has been born as a result of Mommy having a bit of help with the cleaning. Every 14 days, mommy turns into a raving lunatic all for the sweet smell of disinfectant and a few clean countertops to clutter. I wouldn’t like the ladies responsible for making my mommy act that way.

Fortunately for me, the last excerpt of the preschool hand out on routines held a caveat: “While children prefer routine, they are resilient enough when a familiar routine has to be disturbed.” I guess once every two weeks isn’t so bad.