I'm not sure when it happened. Some time around 2004 I would guess. That's when my wife and I officially stopped trying to clean our house faster than our 3 boys could mess it. It seems once they outnumbered us, it was a losing battle from then on. Throughout history there are fine examples of outnumbered military units staging heroic stands against incredible odds...the Battle of the Bulge, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, to name a few.But when parents are outnumbered by their children, the odds for cleanliness are not good. Las Vegas bookies list it at a conservative 25:1. Now I'm not saying our house is a disaster area, in fact, at first glance it appears to be fairly neat. But Laurie and I adopted the "First Glance" Strategy of Cleaning out of pure necessity years ago. First Glances typically don't look in closets or under beds. First Glances certainly don't look in our attic. If they did, they'd find a seemingly endless stack of plastic tubs filled with outdated toys and clothes no longer needed. The key to our First Glance deception is my semi-monthly ritual of hauling a new tub up to the attic. In fact, I noticed recently our attic is starting to resemble that endless warehouse as seen as the end of the original Indiana Jones movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Some day in the next millennium or so an archaeologist will uncover the remains of our house deep in the layers of the earth's crust and they'll label this time period as the "Platic-aseus Period", in honor of the countless plastic action figures, happy meal toys, and lego blocks hiding in plastic tubs.
Now I thought my wife and I were handling this dramatic transition from cleanliness to disorderliness with relative grace, but a recent event tells me I might have underestimated the power of pent-up cleanliness frustrations. We recently borrowed our neighbor's pressure washer to clean our back patio. I took a turn first and began blasting away at the grime and muck of 12 years. It was a liberating experience to say the least. Then Laurie took a turn. She moved from the back patio to the front sidewalk, to the front bricks, to the gutters, and everything else she could blast. She became wild with power, blasting everything in sight. At one point she walked through some bushes and must have disturbed a wasp's nest.
Now I thought my wife and I were handling this dramatic transition from cleanliness to disorderliness with relative grace, but a recent event tells me I might have underestimated the power of pent-up cleanliness frustrations. We recently borrowed our neighbor's pressure washer to clean our back patio. I took a turn first and began blasting away at the grime and muck of 12 years. It was a liberating experience to say the least. Then Laurie took a turn. She moved from the back patio to the front sidewalk, to the front bricks, to the gutters, and everything else she could blast. She became wild with power, blasting everything in sight. At one point she walked through some bushes and must have disturbed a wasp's nest.
Dozens of wasps circled around her. Unfazed by the swarming wasps she actually turned the sprayer toward random wasps in an attempt to pick them off one by one...either that or give them a cleaning they would never forget. I had to put an end to it. I slowly turned the water pressure off as she eased down on the trigger. The crisis ended.
It was at this moment I realized Laurie and I may both be suffering from a severe case of Cleanliness Suppression.
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