Terrible Ten

“You aren’t a great housekeeper, but your house isn’t...you know...unsanitary.”  Anonymous relative when discussing the cleanliness of my house

I am unquestionably a haunted victim of the mother’s curse.  There is absolutely no denying it, and I am reminded of this unfortunate reality every day of my life.  I heard a radio show once about a family whose home was tormented by a demon—complete with unexplained scratches and other marks on the bodies of the family, bleeding walls, and eerie sounds emanating from the basement and attic.  My story isn’t quite so creepy, because my mother’s curse isn’t nearly that dramatic.  The mother’s curse is “I hope you have a child just like you someday!”

I do.  A few of them.  In retrospect, I don’t think I was a terrible kid to raise.  I’ve never been in jail (I did visit once, as part of a leadership opportunity), and I didn’t drink alcohol until I got to college.  I got nearly perfect grades and have never really been exposed to drugs.  I never really had boyfriends, and I more or less abided by my midnight curfew my whole high school life.  So in general, if my kids end up as nerdy and uneventful to raise as I was, I will count myself lucky.  But why the mother’s curse, you ask?  Because I was a slob.  In all honesty, I’m sort of still a slob.  I have always despised housework of any kind and it is only since having my own children that I understand how tireless my own mom was at maintaining cleanliness and order in our house.  She actually likes to clean and indeed had a schedule whereby she scrubbed every wall and baseboard in my childhood home every single year.  I have lived in our house for 15 years and have never once scrubbed a wall that did not have some sort of massive spill or bodily fluid splattered on it.  

Chad’s mom was no different.  I remember going there once after she had been ill and hearing my father in law, also a hardworking and tidy man, lamenting the spotless kitchen he had spent hours cleaning with the words, “I know it won’t be good enough, but I don’t know what else to do” regarding her imminent return.  If my house ever looked like that it was because I had planned for dignitaries (or mothers) to visit and even then I would not advise opening cupboards or closets or looking behind or under anything.  I just don’t like to clean.  The photo at the beginning, of a plaque hanging in my laundry room, exactly describes my sentiments on this subject.  I just have better things to do.  Well, maybe not better, but things (nearly anything) I like better.  

My generation was not raised to be homemakers.  My own mom has a master’s degree and had a job virtually my entire life.  The difference between her and I was that the expectation that she also maintain a perfect home in the midst of her professional and educational accomplishments was never lifted.  As she has put it “All feminism ever did was get me another job.”  I think our generation is a little different.  When I compare myself to my friends, I would say that I am only slightly below average in terms of housekeeping skills.  Comparing my home to the one I grow up in is when I emerge as an enormous failure.  

And, full disclosure, I do have a housekeeper come in twice a month to keep us from descending into utter slovenliness.  I have zero guilt about this when it comes to my husband and I.  We work hard at our day jobs and raising 5 active kids and working full time requires more than enough of our time, energy, and attention in a given week.  Where I do have guilt, however, is with regards to what this is teaching my offspring.  Unfortunately, they have inherited my loathing of all things cleaning and housekeeping related.  Unlike me, they will not grow watching a tidy and diligent mom scrubbing walls, baseboards, and behind and under things to maintain hospital operating room standards of cleanliness.  I worry about this, but not enough to do much differently.  They, like me, will eventually realize that little fairies don’t drop in to pick up their stinky socks and used water glasses—they will have to do it themselves.

Which, at long last, brings me to the title of this post.  It has long been bothering me that my cursed offspring (cursed by my own housekeeping habits) would relax in front of their phones and my TVs when we arrived home each day, while I raced about trying (albeit poorly) to tidy up after 5 people (often 6.  Chad is a better cleaner than I, but he is more messy with his stuff and clutter).  It would take me over an hour to dig out from under the worst of it, and I would generally be royally ticked off and, until after my hip replacement a year ago, also in quite a bit of physical pain.  About a year ago, it occurred to me that 6 or 7 people working for ten minutes could make as much progress as I could make on my own in an hour or more of individual effort.  Insert terrible ten.

Now, for ten terrible minutes, we all work together to tidy up our house.  We set a visible timer, and no one is allowed to stop before it goes off.  In deference to the promise of ten, no one is required to keep going when it buzzes.  In really urgent times of extreme disarray, we have occasionally implemented a terrible twenty, but this is rare.  You would be amazed how much 7 people working for ten little minutes can accomplish.  It is also very effective in that each person finds and deals with his or her own crap, which means I am less often the only person who is able to find things.  Before, when I was cleaning alone, I would often be berated for “hiding” (aka, not leaving them out on the counter) their belongings.  In one notable irony of a recent terrible ten, I found that someone had “hidden” my kindle, which meant that I could not curl up to read after getting my house cleaned by my angry offspring.  After a few minutes of searching, I realized someone had tucked it under my wine rack—a fitting storage location if ever there was one.  

It is indeed a terrible ten minutes, however.  Because we all hate cleaning of all sorts, it is filled with bickering and whining and tattling. In one notable incident, a teenage child cleaned with a bag over his head in the hopes that temporary carbon monoxide poisoning would put him out of his misery. It is seriously unpleasant.  But it is decidedly less unpleasant than the frustration and resentment I feel when the 70 collective minutes of work are handled exclusively by me.  

I never thought I would be a person who would offer a housekeeping life hack, but this has been one of the better parenting and housework ideas I’ve had, so it felt worthwhile to share.  And if the terrible ten is followed by a blissful 60 of me-time (likely involving the aforementioned kindle and wine), I may be a housekeeping genius after all.  T