Suck it up: Vacuuming and the Toddler In My Life

Congratulate me – I vacuumed this weekend.

It only took me about 10 minutes, which probably means I didn’t do a good job, at least that’s what my mom would have said if I completed a chore with that kind of speed when I was a kid. But as I’ve written before, . This was probably the first time I’d vacuumed in at least a month. How’s that for a confession, Cockeysville?

The scant vacuuming thing isn’t wholly my fault; it’s also the kids’ fault for a couple of reasons.

For one, I’m too busy keeping up with them on the weekend to fit in much cleaning that isn’t of the emergency spill clean-up variety. The bigger factor behind my bad vacuuming track record is that the noise generated by the Dyson Animal has been declared too loud by my daughter, who at three can be considered an authority on ear-splitting decibel levels.

If on any given Saturday I say to Lucy, while we are walking up the dusty carpeted stairs to her bedroom for a nap, “Woo, these stairs are a mess. I really need to vacuum later today,” she’ll emphatically reply, “Mommy, you can vacuum tomorrow – tomorrow!” I usually just keep quiet and change the subject, while secretly thinking that oh yes, indeed, I will vacuum today. And then it somehow never happens for whatever reason, be it the fact that I’d rather not upset Lucy by making all that noise, or that I use her reluctance as a reason to be lazy.

Not so this Sunday evening.

Just before Lucy went to bed, I decided that the I’m-gonna-vaccum-this-weekend declaration I’d made 48 hours earlier was not going to be in vain this time. I pulled the vacuum out of the hall closet, ran upstairs and got the job done, albeit in a hasty fashion. And guess what? Lucy was fine. There goes my main excuse for postponing cleaning.

Is mid-February too late to make a new year’s resolution? If not, I should make one now to not let a little one (or her lazy mother) dictate how thick the layer of dog hair is on our rug.