20 minute challenge

Today, I looked around the house at about 2 pm and as always, it was a disaster. It usually is relatively clean before we go to bed every night - the kitchen and the livingroom cannot be left like that overnight! The thing about being at home with the kids all day is - they make a mess. I remember when I used to work and in the morning I would drop the kids at a sitter, go to work until 5, and come home and it was like some miracle - the house was EXACTLY the way we left it in the morning. Which might mean some empty cereal bowls in the sink, but certainly not the tornado-effect that we have by suppertime when the kids are home all day.

Those of you who have clean houses all day never cease to amaze me. My sister in law, for example. She has an almost four-year-old son who is very busy, and a little baby girl. And her house is always clean. She will often call and ask if my four year old would like to come and play for the afternoon (crazy? YES!) and so I will be at my house with one napping baby, she is at her house with one baby, and two four year olds. At three thirty when I go to pick up my oldest from school, I go to get the four year old from SIL's house. And as I walk by I can smell clean laundry from the dryer vent, then I can smell something very good cooking for supper from her stove vent, and then when I get in the door she will be standing holding her 5 month old baby, with a batch of cookies or banana bread cooling on the counter, and whatever the heck it is that smells so good cooking in the oven for supper AND a clean house AND her son AND my daughter have been playing all day.

So, I know it can be done, I just know it can't be done BY ME. But today, I took a look around and wondered if 20 minutes of dedicated cleaning might be able to put a dent in it. I challenge anyone else to do this - take a picture of an untidy place in your house, then work at it for 20 minutes, and take another picture. Let's see what you can do!!!

Kitchen @ 2:40-ish

Kitchen @ around 3:00

With the kitchen looking better than it has in days, I walked into the livingroom to find this:

That is right, two children still in PJ's and a heckuva mess. So I decided to put in another 10 minutes or so before I had to get my oldest from school, and so by the time I got her home, it looked more like this:


So, that was well worth the half hour I put in but the sad part is that since she came home from school, there were demands for a snack and they discovered the neatly stacked coloring books on the island while they were snacking, so now the island in the kitchen is somewhere between the "before" and "after" picture. And, I have to make cookies and supper isn't started. So I can't say what its going to look like 20 minutes from now. But I have pictures to prove it *was* clean, once.