Inspiration from Stephanie

A few weeks ago I read this post from Stephanie of For Better or For Worse about how she thoroughly cleans her house on Mondays, a tradition she kept from her mother. In my comment to her I said that when I was a kid, our family always did our big cleaning on Saturday. In fact, there was a children's song we would often sing in church that goes:

Saturday is a special day.
It's the day we get ready for Sunday:
We clean the house, and we shop at the store,
So we won't have to work until Monday.
We brush our clothes, and we shine our shoes,
And we call it our get-the-work-done day.
Then we trim our nails, and we shampoo our hair,
So we can be ready for Sunday.

I realize the basic message the song delivers is to keep the Sabbath day holy, but what I heard was that all the cleaning, shopping, and laundry had to be done on Saturday. In the nine-and-a-half years since dh and I were married, I could often be found at the grocery store at 11:00 on Saturday night. I didn't have time to shop during the day, because I was getting the house and the kids all shiny while dh played. When he was a kid, the weekend was for skiing, biking, golfing, hiking, playing soccer, anything but work. Can you imagine how our world exploded on Saturdays? Eventually, we compromised and I began doing my housework throughout the week so we could do more fun things after dh did a little bit of yard work on Saturday.

I admit, I have struggled trying to find a routine that works for me. I tried Flylady and did a little something every day. I rebelled. Then I made my own "do it when it needs it" method. I quickly realized that my opinion of when something needed to be cleaned was different than dh's, and that caused even more contention. After that, I set up a system of daily jobs for my children to do and thought I would help and teach them. My kids still do their daily jobs, but it just felt like the house was never cleaned properly. It just didn't shine or smell like my childhood home did at noon on Saturday.

So this week I tried something new. Like Stephanie, I thoroughly cleaned my home Monday morning. A great level of satisfaction came to me when the smells of furniture polish, vinegar, ammonia, and bleach simultaneously permeated our home; when I saw the sparkle of the bathroom fixtures; and when I walked on the fluffy, freshly-vacuumed carpet (no I wasn't high). It felt like Saturday, on Monday. Aaaahhh.

I am keeping this routine for sure!