I Just Want to Be Clean

 I'm always a little jealous of my coworkers' desks at school.  They are neat and tidy with color-coded folders, tabbed lesson books, and carefully placed figurines that read something like, "Teachers Poop Rainbows on a Cloudy Day."  They look, in short, what an educator's desk should look like.  Neat.  Professional.  Organized.

The only two days my desk looks like that is on the first and last day of the school year.  In the space between, it's almost always covered in piles of paper, student projects, long-forgotten lesson books, and old Tupperware containers.  And I can never find a working pen or the hall passes.  

My desk could be featured in one of those afternoon specials they use as a warning in health class.  My desk chose the wrong path in life, kids.  Don't be like that desk.

It's not that I don't want my desk to be a role model for other desks.  I'm not lazy.  I care.  It's just that my brain doesn't work that way.  My thoughts are not organized and tidy.  As a result, I have a hard time keeping things in order.  

If you had met me in my twenties, my entire life looked like my messy desk.  My car, my purse, my apartment.  It was all a hot mess of laundry piles and Styrofoam coffee cups.  

But I didn't mind.  I didn't even see the mess.  I knew just which pile of papers my bills were tossed in, and I knew which pile of shoes contained the boots I was looking for.  That's all that mattered.  

Then, sometime shortly after giving birth to Madeline, things began to change.  Maybe it was what they call "nesting."  Maybe my new mommy brain was cluttered enough already without adding piles of crafting supplies to the mix.  Maybe being a parent simply means that you choose to not let your offspring grow up in squalor whenever possible.  Whatever the reason, something in my brain snapped.  I see the mess now.  I can't stand living that way any longer.

I want things neat.  I want things organized.  I want to be able to find my damn car keys and phone and boots the second that I need them.  

So if you want to know how motherhood has changed me the most.  This is it.  It's not the capacity to love someone more than myself.  It's the desire to have a color-coded food-storage system in the pantry.

Now, I don't just wash my clothes, but I actually take the time to put the laundry away.  I dust.  I vacuum.  A lot.  I sweep.  A lot. I throw the mail out instead of letting it pile up on all the flat surfaces.  I disinfect.  I sort.  I organize.

Is my life any less cluttered?  Does my world now resemble a Febreze commercial?

No.  

Sadly the joke is on me.  Those darn, beautiful children of mine, who pushed me to change my filthy ways in the first place, just keep making more messes.  I follow them around the house wiping blueberry fingerprints off the furniture and nagging Maddie to pick up her puzzle pieces.  

I'm stuck in some sort of Sisyphean hell of my own making where I spend my days cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning.  Yet, our house never gets any cleaner.

We spent the morning cleaning their room.  Then this happened.  

I've tried staying on top of the mess, but that just means that I do nothing but clean every waking moment of my life.  I've tried ignoring the mess, opting to clean it all in one swift swoop.  That just makes living here unbearable.  I've tried scheduling my cleaning.  Yet, on the days that I'm scheduled to scrub the kitchen floor, I find that the bathroom floor really needs it more.

And my brain!  My disorganized, wandering, cluttered brain!  Why must you decide that the closet needs reorganizing half way through cleaning the living room?

I don't know what the answer is.  I need a maid.  A new brain would be great too.  You know what?  Just send me Martha Stewart.

Meanwhile, I go back to work next fall.  This will give me a reprieve from spending my days cleaning up after two mini mess monsters.  I bet my desk is shaking at the thought of my return though.  It's probably never looked so good than in my absence.  Sorry desk.