I recently came across an article entitled, "10 Reasons I Keep My House Clean" (click here for the article). It is a lovely article with 10 very valid reasons for cleaning your house every day, from the fact that it looks better to finding things easier to not being embarrassed to have people over. As someone who decidedly does not keep a clean house, though, I put together 10 Reasons I Do NOT Keep My House Clean, aka, justified laziness for the rest of us.
10. I like to help people feel better about themselves. Many people like to talk about what a messy house they have - perhaps a random paper or two scattered on the counter? Or the fact that they haven't changed their bed sheets for a full week? I fully believe that one of my life purposes is to help people feel better about themselves by showing them our house so that they can think, wow, I guess I'm not as much of a slob as I thought.
9. My husband is just as big of a
8. I get an extra hour a day to spend on important endeavors such as Words with Friends or Facebook browsing. The article I read talked about how the author "only" spent an hour speed cleaning every day to keep everything looking clean. Well. The extra hour can be used for VERY IMPORTANT THINGS, like Candy Crush after everyone is asleep.
7. We have at least 4 of some random items, making us well stocked for Garlic Emergencies. A potential benefit of having a clean house is that you save money by not always purchasing duplicate items. But where is the fun in that? There are certain items that we can never find and are always purchasing more of until it is ridiculous, such as when my friend Melendra organized our spice cabinet and realized we had a whole *four* bottles of garlic powder hiding in different recesses.
6. The times I DO clean the house, I get a huge emotional payoff. When we lived in Kansas City, I tried cleaning the house every day. It was nice, but I felt like I was doing all of this work and it never really looked different. Now, when we clean the house, people notice, especially me.
5. It fosters creativity. (Maybe?) Another argument that the other article made was that having a clean house made it easier to think creatively. Perhaps, but for our darling children, nothing seems to foster their ability to create Bizarre Wrapping Paper Animals like hugs amounts of crap laying around.
4. Cleaning the house when the children are growing is like shoveling snow when it's still snowing. My Aunt Elaine had this as a placard growing up, and I love the logic. And it is true....some people shovel while it is still snowing, but I see that as futile.
3. Exposure to germs = boosted immunity. Some studies have come out recently linking the increase in allergies in asthma due to a lack of exposure to dirt and germs. This is a simplified conclusion, but I like to think that I am giving our children The Gift Of Health (or something like that).
2. No one goes to their grave wishing their house had been kept cleaner. This is kind of a lame argument, because you can say this about ANYTHING that isn't fun. No one dies wishing they had worked more, either, but someone in the family having a job while everyone is alive is still important. But since this helps my argument, I am sticking to it.
1. Because in the end, I Just Don't Care. I think it honestly comes down to this - I am okay with mess. I am okay with people seeing that we live in mess, and that our children are growing up with mess, and that it just isn't a high priority for us. And in the end, as with most things, that will probably be okay, too.
Where do you stand on the house-cleaning spectrum?
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