Why it Takes Me Four Hours to Clean the Kitchen

As I've stated before, my life has changed in a drastic way since I became a stay-at-home-mom. I used to be able to clean my house pretty quickly. Even as a single mom, the job wasn't so hard. Laundry was hard, because I didn't have a washer and dryer, but house-cleaning - not so hard.

Then I started to analyze why that might be. Why do I work all day and then look at the house and it seems as if nothing has gotten done? Why do I do piles of laundry on an almost daily basis, only to turn around and see another pile staring me in the face?

I have come up with a couple of reasons for why this might be:

First, the places I lived before I got married were small. In seminary, I called my apartment "the bat cave." It was small and sort-of dark. There was nothing that required mopping. I could scrub a floor faster and easier than I could mop it, so small were the surfaces that needed mopping. Though I didn't have a dishwasher, I never had many dishes to wash. And my kitchen was tiny. I called it the mouse kitchen. Cracker box. Tiny.

In Iowa, before I married Scott, Chicken Nugget and I lived in a studio. Bathroom, kitchen, large room (used for living/bedroom). That was it. Small, cozy, not much to clean. So space has a lot to do with the amount of time I spend cleaning. We have a three bedroom, two bath house with a living room and a den. Makes sense I spend more time cleaning.

Another thing is, the less people you live with, the less there is to clean up after, and the fewer interruptions you face during the cleaning process. Cleaning for two (CN and myself) was much more controlled, and CN has always been helpful.

I could probably get my house cleaned up with no problem if no one else lived with me. But as it is, I'll start cleaning something and it will immediately be undone. Banana loves to take the dishes out of the dishwasher as I'm loading it. He is especially fond of the silverware. It feels like I load the thing four times for every one load that I wash. And if I can get him distraced from that little past-time, it won't be long before I have to go see why he and Noodle are crying. It is usually something to do with Noodle inflicting bodily harm on Banana, or with Banana eating the toilet paper, or something like that. After I've dealt with one or more crises in that manner, then I will return to loading the dishwasher. In short order, Banana will back into the kitchen, start taking things out of the dishwasher, and the cycle begins all over again.

Or if I am sweeping and mopping, one of the kids always wants in on the action, whether it be playing in the junk I've just swept up, or trying to take the broom or mop (whichever one I am not using at the moment), or sitting right in front of my cleaning path.

And in the meantime, even if I'm not stopping someone from taking things out of the dishwasher, sitting in the swept-up junk, or interrupting my cleaning in general, I always have to go clean up the messes made as I was cleaning other messes. See what I mean?

So that is why it takes me four hours to clean the kitchen.