As I wax philosophic....

We are spring cleaning and packing to get ready for a long weekend in Omaha. And I like to be organized. I like my house to be clean. But the law of diminishing returns very quickly gets applied to my house. I keep up with the dishes and laundry. I take the trash out on a regular basis--I have no funky smells in my house (except for my garage which a stray cat habitually sprayed this winter, but I digress.) My children eat healthful meals and snacks. I change diapers and everyone in the house bathes or is bathed at least once every 48 hours. The bathrooms get cleaned once in awhile and the same with the floors. Once a week or so we all walk through and throw toys in a basket. We've reached an equilibrium. But I've found that I COULD spend HOURS more a day on housework and my house is only nominally cleaner--and I'm substantially grumpier. I mean, I get positively EVIL when I've spent 1/2 an hour scrubbing a floor and one of the children walks in with muddy shoes--or accidentally lets a puppy in. When I've paid a child to clean the bathroom, it's not done that well, but I also could care less when it looks a mess the next day. However, when I've cleaned that same bathroom, I find myself SCREAMING at the child who left toys all over and dumped the sand from their pockets onto the (clean?) floor.

So--I continue to organize and purge in my quest for simplicity, but I'm a much better (happier) Mommy when I have time to sit and stamp something beautiful or read a good book. The dust will be there tomorrow....