What's a Mom to do?

When I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve or so, Melanie and I would stand side by side washing the dishes. This was a pretty regular thing. We chatted as we worked and neither of us minded doing the work. I remember her telling me that, before my mom took a full-time job, my dad called the family together and told them they'd need to step it up with the housework, since Mom wouldn't be home all day any more. I don't remember that family council, but I do remember working with Melanie on the house, daily. When Melanie got married I took over the housework myself. I remember doing the dishes, mopping the floor on my hands and knees (because I thought it did a better job than the sponge mop), dusting and vacuuming, and just generally cleaning up  every day. Every now and then I'd complain at my older brothers and younger sister for not helping out, but I still kept working. I kept an amazingly clean house. In fact, it bothered me to not have a clean house—just as it does now.

Over the last few years, as I've struggled trying to get my kids to do even  half of what I did, I've sometimes wondered if I've been seeing myself and this part of my life with rosy superhero lenses. You know . . . "When I was your age I walked to school ten miles uphill in thigh-deep snow with bare feet." That kind of thing.

But both Bruce and Melanie have reassured me that I really did take care of the house like that. Bruce has told me (many times) that I was an exceptional kid in this house-cleaning respect. And that used to really annoy me because it meant that I couldn't get my kids to do what I did.

But I remembered a time when I was first dating Bruce:  His mom put the kids' names on the calendar, in ink, on the days they had to do the dishes. So I was at his house and we were playing a board game when Mom came in and told —whichever kid it was for that day— that it was their turn to do the dishes. And that kid argued with her. It was not his/her day, it was someone else's turn. I could hardly believe it! In the first place I would never have argued with my mom, but the glaring, obvious truth was that that kid's name was on the calendar and had been since the beginning of the month. Wow. My nineteen-year-old self was shocked.

And there's no question that my older brothers and younger sister couldn't have seemed to care less about keeping the house clean. So maybe Melanie and I were exceptional. But that doesn't make my current house-cleaning dilemma any less frustrating.

You may recall that when I was first in school, about three years ago, I went on strike. I was so busy with my school projects that I couldn't keep up with the house. And one particular day the kitchen was a total disaster and an appliance repair-man was coming over to work on my oven, and I was mortified that he should come into my kitchen where the dishes hadn't been done in days, and there was a mess everywhere, etc. So I posted a sign in the front yard and my demands on the front door. And I got a lot of support from Bruce and my friends. But it didn't solve the problem, and Bruce did tell me that some of my children were mightily offended by my actions. (Never mind that I am offended daily by having my requests, pleas, threats, bribes, etc. ignored. Or at least having my family (perhaps on some subconscious level) hope that somehow this problem will all just go away.)

I have relaxed a little bit over the intervening three years. Sort of. I still feel nervous and unhappy in a messy house. But I have accepted that the kids will never take care of the house like I would, and I often use my school breaks to get things looking and feeling they way I want them to. And the family has gotten a little better over the last three years too.

Now, three years since the infamous mom strike, I have taken leave of  housecleaning duties again. Not because I'm angry and rebelling, but because I am so freaking busy with sewing my collection. Yesterday I spent twelve hours laying out, cutting and sewing one of my easier skirts and almost got it done. I still have eight things to make, and the four I've started need finish-work done, all by the end of March. So I really don't clean house these days, and don't intend to do it any time soon. My upcoming Spring Break will be used for twelve-hour sewing days.

A couple of months ago, to make up for my impending lack of house-cleaning participation, we divvied the chores amongst the kids: two on the living room, one on the bathrooms, one on the laundry area, and three in the kitchen. They are all responsible for their own bedrooms and laundry. Unfortunately it's not going fabulously; even the living room decree (the living room must be perfectly clean every night before bed time) has fallen by the wayside. To make the situation even more exciting, the dishwasher has broken down. :-/

So, between the three kitchen cleaners, I see this:

There's Rachel, doing the dishes all by herself. There's not even another soul in the kitchen.

This is not what I intended when we assigned three people to do this job.

I've tried to tell them that it would lighten the load if at least two of them worked together like Melanie and I used to. But no. They pick one person to start, and when she decides that she's had enough she stops and gets the next person to do some dishes; when she thinks she's done she gets the next person. And when she decides she's had enough she just stops. Consequently today, Sunday morning, we still have dirty pans from Thursday night, and no clean glasses or spoons.

These dishes are waiting for the next child to come along and work on them.

The kitchen is the most obvious part of the whole predicament since there's no space to prepare and cook meals, and it's getting so that we don't have dishes to use either. But the living room pretty much gets ignored (it's not super messy, but vacuuming the new carpet might be a good idea), and the bathroom doesn't look fabulous. And it makes me unhappy. And too bad for me.

While they're not bad about getting the work done if I work with them, and sometimes they are even pretty good about doing it without me, my family isn't just going to take care of the house on their own every day, despite appeals to reason, requests, pleas, threats or bribes. The problem doesn't go away, no matter how much we'd all like it to.

What is a busy, busy, stressed-out, and exhausted mom to do?