My family and I went to visit another big homeschooling family. I've known this woman to be gracious and lovely. She is always nicely dressed and her children are always tidy and beautiful. The public areas in the front of her home are neat and welcoming. On this day, though, my husband was going to help with a repair, so we went into the parts of the house which were not public. Everywhere I looked was clutter. There were books and toys strewn about and piled high in the family room. The bathrooms were dingy. Upstairs, the beds were poorly made, if made at all, and the mattresses were sinking. Wallpaper was peeling. It was a shocking experience. Here was someone who clearly placed a great importance on her public image, but in the private parts of her home, there was no care at all. It mattered to her that her home welcome friends, but clearly she did not care to make it a haven for her family.
After reading the commentary by Elizabeth Foss of another mom's housekeeping deficiencies I have vacuumed 4 rooms and the stairs, cleaned one bathroom, and picked up an untold number of toys.
Looks pretty good.
At least until Will and Mary get home from Enrichment and the movie the littles are watching gets turned off.
Housekeeping is a touchy subject in homeschooling circles. Keeping up a home seems an impossible task for one person, especially since the mom essentially has 3 full time jobs: teacher, mom, and housekeeper. When is the laundry going to be folded when a 4th grader needs help with math and the toddler just spilled milk all over the kitchen floor? Every minute seems to be accounted for in a large family, simply getting everyone up, dressed, and fed can take almost 2 hours. It always seems that when the living room needs vacuuming the toddler is spreading toys out faster than you can pick them up.
Some moms hire help, I did this for 6 years, and it helps tremendously but is very expensive. Some moms are so ultra-organized that the house seems to clean itself, but I personally don't know any of these! Other moms just let it all go to pot and the bathrooms look like they haven't been scrubbed in years, yuck! But there is, I believe in the majority of homeschooling homes, a balancing act between clutter and obsessiveness. It involves just doing it, not going up the stairs or down with empty hands, having one job going on constantly, enlisting the kid's help, and a myriad of other tricks to have a house that is clean enough.
One day I will have a clean home that is decorated just right, but I think it will happen when all the children have moved out. Until then I will just practice my housekeeping tightrope walk.
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2 comments:
I struggle with this all the time! Daily life is easier now that the kids are older and more capable. I do have a chort chart that we change monthly. The kids just do the basic chores.. dishes, laundry (take it down and bring it up- I put stuff in the washer), sweep, clean up toys, garbage and I am responsible for the rest.
I guess it depends on your values.
The woman described in your excerpt may have needed to decide where to put her efforts. She chose to have a nice place to welcome visitors, but was obviously not uncomfortable with the rest of her house being cluttered. And really, who cares? I grew up with clutter everywhere, but what I really remember, is that my mother, who had to work to support us, spent most of her "free" time with us. We did very inexpensive, cool and amazingly educational things--though we did not think of that part at the time! We visited almost every civil war battlefield in the Eastern and Midwestern part of the US. Who cared if we only had one bathroom and the towels were not folded just so.
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