Peeved

Our house is a disaster all the time these days. As soon as I get something cleaned up, someone destroys it. It's not just kiddo or hubby or Mojo or me. It's all of us. We're all equally guilty (except maybe the baby -- his big messes are usually in his diapers and sometimes he spits up all over me and the bed, but those are easier to contain than the messes made by the big people). And none of us has enough time in the day to clean it all over and over, so it just keeps looking like crap even when we clean.

So, I was reading this month's Ensign a week or two ago, and there was an article by a daughter about her aging parents. It talks about how her mother used to gripe and moan about toothpaste splashes being on the mirror, and how she blamed her husband for it all. Then after her husband died, she kept finding toothpaste splashes on the mirror and realized it was her, too.

My first thought was, duh. Then I kept reading, and she said she regretted how much time she spent griping at him about it.

Well. I don't gripe at my DH about toothpaste or stuff like that, but I do get SO frustrated when the kitchen looks like a pig sty. I realized if I want the dishes done every night and the sinks wiped out (because ew stuff in the bottom of any sink is my pet peeve), then I need to do it myself and not have a bad attitude about it. The messy stove grosses me out, too, but I only have so much time to clean. So I picked the thing that bugs me the most (the sink and dishes) and I'm working on it, making sure I take time every day to get it done.

Guess what? My attitude has changed and it's getting done, and even if the rest of the house looks like crap, I know there are clean sinks in the kitchen 90% of the time. Wheeeeeeeeee. I mentioned it to hubby and he was like, "Oh, good." See, he knows my pet peeve about the sinks. I don't gripe about it, but did mention it to him once fairly recently (before the Ensign article), and he's been working on keeping the sinks in the bathroom cleaner ever since.

(and as soon as we're caught up on bills and we have a routine down so I can work more consistently, i'm hiring a maid)