Cleaning House After Having Children by Raven Jennifer Demers

CLEANING HOUSE AFTER HAVING CHILDREN

by Raven J. Demers

I’m going to be up front with you on this: if you absolutely must have a pristine, spotless, immaculate palace of a home, then don’t have children. Just don’t, because if you expect your home to remain a museum after you have children, either you’ll end up an insomniac who cleans all night, or your children will develop nervous tics and ulcers at an early age. Most likely both. So, if you want children, but you’re used to an efficiently cleaned home, it’s time to start reevaluating your priorities. For me, getting the house clean so that the walls sparkle is fairly low in my priorities list—right below learning how to clog dance in my spare time. What spare time?

The days are gone when women strove to be Donna Reed—an illusion of an ideal as it is—and we need to redefine for ourselves what cleanliness means to us. I strive to keep the house “in order,” or “neat and tidy,” but the meaning of those ambiguous terms changes from day to day. At the very least, I want the day’s dishes done and the tables moderately clean. I am not, however, going to whip out the Windex every time my daughter touches the glass. Remember the facial tics and insomnia?

Perfection is impossible even when we don’t have kids, but it’s almost laughable once we start to realize that our two year olds don’t understand the difference between “washable” markers and Sharpies. However, we still don’t wish to wallow in filth, and we all want our children to learn responsibility and independence, and letting the kids help in household chores is a great way to get them on the right track. The problem is that until they start to develop fine motor skills, there isn’t much they can do.

In the first two years, you’re not likely to be able to keep up with any of it. If you’re a single parent or part of a two-income family, then chances are you have too many responsibilities just attempting to pay bills and keep up with your children, and cleaning becomes a daunting task. You are not a failure if you’ve left a mess in the living room or some dishes in the sink, and you’re definitely not alone. Even with two people trailing after my daughter almost constantly, my mother’s house was in shambles after only a week’s stay. And if you get two children or more together, it’s best to sit back and just watch the whirlwind unfold, then tidy up after they’ve passed out in a heap of angelic smiles.

By the time your child’s two, it’s probably a good time to start encouraging him to help you pick up his toys and put them in the toy chest or general bin. Telling your little girl to put a book back on its shelf may cause a new form of stacking to develop, but she’s learning valuable skills, and you’re on your feet less trying to chase after her. At the toddler stage, they still need assistance, and working with your child to clean up their messes is the best way to show them that helping out and taking care of themselves is rewarded by your support and smiles.

After four or five, children tend to want to help out. My mother calls it the beginning of the “angelic phase.” This is not to suggest that children stop making messes, acting out, or coloring on the walls, but it does mean you can start making cleaning up their messes their punishment. When my little girl, after helping me with our mini-garden, ran her mud-soaked hands on the wall from one end of the apartment to another, I got out the sponge, water, and soap, and made her wash up the wall until it was white again. You may also find, depending on your child’s temperament, that there will be a chore or two they especially like helping with—in my home it’s dishes and laundry.

As children mature, chores may become tiresome to them, but they become their own rewards through chore-based allowances or special privileges for cleaning one’s room. Letting the children who help out more stay up later on weekends or go out with friends to an exciting sleepover are incentives to continue the positive habits you’re instilling in them. In this way you show that with proving they can handle responsibilities, you trust them with having more freedom. More than anything, though, the pride you show and the encouragement you give to your children for their assistance around the house is the one thing they will hold with them throughout their lives.

Now, I know if you’re expecting your first child, or that first one is still toddling around, you’re probably exhausted by the mess you have to step over in order to get to anywhere in your home. Or worse, you’ve been struggling to keep the dirt and dishes in order, and you want to know how you can possibly catch up with it all. Here are a few suggestions to keep you going:

1) Enlist a friend or relative’s help, or hire a babysitter for a few hours once or twice a month to watch the child (or children) so you can get at the deep cleaning that needs to be done. And to honor your own needs, why not add on a couple of extra hours to your alone time so you can spend some of it at a spa or in meditation, or just catching up on your sleep.

2) Make a priority list and include in it the different types of chores that need to be done regularly. Schedule the biggest priorities first, the next biggest second, and so on, and leave dusting Aunt Marge’s soccer trophies for when the kids are in college.

3) Take everything slowly after the birth of your child, and only take on tasks in small amounts of time so you don’t feel overwhelmed by all that’s waiting to be cleaned. If you need to go through the boxes in the garage, do one or two boxes a day, and leave the rest for the next day. Doing this will also give you a daily amount of exercise beyond running after your children.

4) When in doubt, CALL A MAID SERVICE. Let’s face it, there are times—sometimes months—when you might not find the time or energy to scrub the grout with a toothbrush. There are many affordable maid services that can come in and just get the deep cleaning done, or focus on one room that always seems to be a bore. Setting aside a little money in the budget once a month for that kind of help can be a blessing to any parent on the go.

Keep in mind that no parent is perfect, and no matter how precious your little angel is—she isn’t perfect either. It’s ok to have fingerprints on the sliding glass door, or your son’s clothes hanging over the dining room chair—it happens; it’s life. When first starting out as a parent, everything becomes a shocking, new adventure, and we often have to rewrite the rules we lived under before the children came. You’re going to say things your parents said to you that you never thought you’d hear yourself say, and you will very likely find yourself fretting over all you haven’t done around the house. The most important use of your time, though, is in spending time with your child—even if it gets sticky purple paint on your clothes.