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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