Three hours one Thursday

Today, I departed from my usual "frenzied" morning schedule, which if I was to disclose it would probably not seem very frenzied to you at all, so I'm not going to describe my normal activities. :) But today it was raining and last night I had gotten frustrated with the state of our home, so I decided that this morning would be dedicated to staying at home and trying to create order out of the CHAOS! (Flylady describes this as Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, which I think is sheer genious!)

And so rather than run errands or take the Little Man to the park, Little Man and I stayed home. For three hours I tidied up the kitchen, the dining area, did laundry and tidied up the living room and when it was over I thought... "Why doesn't it look like I did anything?" In the old days, when I was a professional housecleaner, I could clean a 3 or 4 bedroom house in 3 hours!! Shazam!! Today, I barely made a dent in 2 rooms. Very discouraging. But then I have a 2 1/2 year old boy in the house! And he must be kept well occupied in productive, constructive activities! Plus, ya need to take the occasional tickle or snack break, don't ya?!

So if you walked in to my house this afternoon, 5 minutes after Little Man went down for his nap, you'd be pretty unimpressed with my progress. I'm fairly sure, my new role model's house never looks this way. And yes, I was disheartened, but then I spent another half hour or so picking up toys and putting up a border of plates in my kitchen and things were looking up! :) What a difference a toddler-free 30 minutes can make! And as I reasoned to myself, I still got 3 hours of housework in that I would've had to do at another time, so it was worth it.