For some, cleanliness is next to godliness. For me, cleanliness is next to impossible.—Pigpen

The cleaning lady usually comes every other Tuesday. She did not come last Tuesday because it was Christmas. She will not come tomorrow because it is New Year’s Day. I am not sure when she will come again and I will have to call her. But, in the meantime, desperate times deserve desperate measures so I am cleaning.

Cleaning does not come naturally to me nor to any of my immediate kin. The real reason we have a cleaning lady is so that our cheapness will force us to straighten up periodically. After all, who wants to pay someone to vacuum if she can’t even find the floor? Certainly not Mr. Philately---even though I might otherwise fall prey to that temptation from time to time.

But once I begin to clean, cleaning takes on a life of its own. If I’m going to clean, I want to see that I have done something. If you start me cleaning the kitchen, I’ll find the countertops that have not been seen since Kat’s Bat Mitzvah and I’ll wash off the grease on the outside of the food processor—and then I’ll know that I need a cleaning lady to keep me from using up all my energy on the non-important stuff.

Now, I do believe in kid power. Each girl will do her own room. Kat will be exempt from more because she’s been working non-stop for the past two days on a school project and I expect another day’s worth today. I hate it when her homework interferes so badly with her homelife but today she might be grateful. Day-Hay may be tapped to do a bathroom or the hallway. I want my girls to choose not to clean because they want to, not because they don’t know how to.

Unfortunately, I’ll clean so well that I’m likely to use up all of my passion for it on a few rooms. It’s either feast or famine. My kitchen and the girls’ bathroom gleams. I do hope I’ll manage to get the living room vacuumed before I totally lose interest.

But I won’t tackle the dreaded dining room. I haven’t used that room as a dining room since it became Stamp Central. Much as I might like to reclaim that room, one look at it and I am the maid looking at the desk of the mad scientist and tiptoeing around it. I think I’ll just bide my time. Eventually, I’ll get to say to Mr. Philately, “The good news is that company is coming. The bad news is that you have to find the dining room table.” I just hope I’ll still be able to find Mr. Philately in there by then.

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