My husband and I always had time to clean when it was just the two of us. In fact, he loves to tell the story of how, when I went into labor, he was the one who had the nesting instinct. While I timed my contractions, he scrubbed the bathroom. It's almost as if we both knew that a clean house would become a thing of the past as soon as we brought a baby home.
At first, as new parents, we were just too tired -- there were late night (or was it early morning?) feedings, diapers to change, clothes to wash, the basics. Who had time to worry about dust? Certainly not us or our friends.
Then, the choice became even more fundamental. When we had a few disposable minutes, would we rather be together reading or playing outside, or was having a clean house more important? From there, there was no looking back.
So, we cleaned only when we were having people over. And then, we started having people over just as motivation to clean.
Unfortunately, we had friends who would come by without calling, and that became, well, messy. Mostly, they didn't care that there was food in the living room or toothpaste clinging to the bathroom sink. But every once in awhile, I'd catch a glimpse, an unedited reaction, and I'd feel embarrassed. "This isn't me," I'd want to say. "I'm really very neat ... inside."
And I think that's what it was about ultimately for me. I didn't mind living with chaos. I could maintain my inner peace about it, but I didn't want anyone else to see me as undisciplined or lazy.
We talked about having someone else clean for us, but that felt wrong. Like hiring someone to write in my journal or call my parents. I felt it was my duty to make the bed I'd slept in and by shirking that responsibility, I was denying myself the satisfaction of being an adult.
Then people kept asking us how long we had lived in a house that had been ours for five years. And I realized that I was so busy tending to my inner garden that my outer landscape was literally (and figuratively) overgrown.
This was right around Sept. 11, a time when many of us began nesting again. Suddenly, we had curtains for every window, hooks for every coat, pillows for lounging on the couch, and living accessories galore.
After getting used to all the new stuff to straighten, I marveled at how good it felt to have the inside and the outside match.
Sometimes, that means both are messy, and sometimes both are tidy. Most often, they're somewhere in between.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
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