It's cleaning time - but not, or kinda... I don't want to.

I stayed up a little too late reading all these ways to truly clean your house. There are magazines and television shows devoted to a clean house. I get how people can lose entire days in the pursuit of the perfectly coiffed home. Everything is always pretty, perfect and coordinated. I find a degree of cleanliness and neatness also occurs in households with no children, or a small child to adult ratio - like two parents, one kid, three parents, two kids etc etc... I have three kids and a husband that works forever, so my ratio is 1:4. I'd surrender, I would, but there's no one to surrender to. I  even tried once. I spent a week once waving a white pillowcase to the OverLords of Organization, Order and Coordinated Rooms, bought just for the occasion, but they refused to accept it.

I can say that most of my house is pretty and coordinated when it's clean, we've painted most of the downstairs, and two of the bedrooms upstairs, but, alas.... the perfect part eludes me.

I do have pockets of clean areas that move around the house, sometimes it's my desk area, sometimes it's the living room, sometimes it's the kitchen, but it's never all of those areas at once. My house isn't big enough to trick guests. I can't just invite them into the pocket of clean, because we have a small town home and an open floor plan. Poor planning on not-my-part.  I suspect the real problem lies in the children, and there isn't a place I can store them neatly, though I have tried.

Their stuff gets everywhere. It creeps out of their room into the hall, down the stairs and onto every surface - there's a sock, shoes, a leftover shirt that randomly got taken off, stuffed animals, a small lego creation... just now, I see a long green stuffed snake, some hero factory dude, headphones, night vision goggles (toy)... all scattered randomly around. They pick them up when I say, then somehow, new things come back.

That, and crafts.  I'm looking at a corner filled with fabric, plastic bags of pieces of fabric cut for a quilt I'd like to work on and somehow, a rock tumbler, a white board and a few other non-mine things have slipped in the open boxes.

I could leave it all today. I could. But I can't stand the sight of it. What I mostly want to do is get to my writing, but it's hard to write when all around you is disorder and chaos. I must take care of the house now when I have the vacation time if I want to write at home.

So that's why today I'll probably go to a coffee shop to write...