And I remembered, after several years in primary, why it is often simpler to save my questions for later, if one does not want to be treated like a . . . well, like a faith-deficient troublemaker. (When in fact one is merely curious and intrigued by inconsistencies.)

Anyway, by the time Relief Society rolled around, I was properly chastised. Chrysanthemum, having taken Dick’s spot, may have heard mutterings, but mostly I was good.

Our lesson was a discussion of New Year’s resolutions, based on the three goals in the Introduction to Relief Society: increase faith, strengthen families and homes, and serve the Lord and His children. So far, so worthy a list of endeavors.

With each goal there is a quote from last year’s Ensign or Church News. The quote under “strengthen families and homes” is:

Although parenting is hard work, it is made a little easier with the gospel, said Joselyn Akana . . . from Hawaii. ‘It helps me when I have the gospel to anchor me in the caring of my family,’ she said it is important in mothering to consider what a mother should look and sound like. The key to motherhood, she said, is having patience and relying on the gospel for guidance” (Lisa Christensen, “Convert Says Gospel Helps with Parenting,” Church News, June 13, 2009, 15). [sic]

I agree with a lot of this. Parenting is hard work, and the gospel makes it easier by infusing it with eternal significance and providing both interesting examples of parenting and the desire to be a good parent. And I believe whole-heartedly that the key to motherhood is patience. What dominated our discussion, though, was the middle part, that:

it is important in mothering to consider what a mother should look and sound like.

If you have read this website for any amount of time, you know that I am rather preoccupied with what a mother should sound like, or rather, my regret over too often not sounding like what I think a mother should sound like.

But, no. We discussed what a mother should look like. The teacher (also our great Relief Society president who I personally love not only because she drives Sally to school every morning) started by saying her mother always got up 30 minutes before the rest of the family, no matter how early that turned out to be, even on camping trips, to do her hair and have full makeup on before anyone saw her. And (this is why I love her) she said that that always seemed like a huge waste of time to her, and that she is personally much lazier, etc, but now (and this is where things took a downturn) she thinks she maybe  should definitely be doing this.

Several sisters shared similar stories and proclaimed the virtues of treating motherhood like any other job (you’d get dressed up for a real job, right?) and having lots of mirrors in your house so you could check your hair and lipstick and your shirt to make sure you looked good all day, especially if your husband is retired and can see you anytime.

The 15-minute to one-hour power session of cleaning the house, grooming the children, and having dinner on the table right before dad comes home was extolled, and the testimonial given that if we only cared for our appearance we’d feel better about ourselves, and don’t our children (and husbands) deserve to see us looking our best?

I think about this a lot. I think about what my children, my daughters see when they look at me. I think about what they deserve, what they need, what will equip them best for life as they look at me. Especially when Susan makes some statement of discovery and description in the car about how being a doctor like grandpa or a writer like daddy are boy jobs and being a mom is a girl job.

Of course, being a mom is a girl job, and in some ways I do it it the traditional girliest manner possible. But I want Susan to know that girls can be doctors or writers too, and sometimes I worry about how I can ever really teach that to my daughters if all they see me doing is being a mom. On the other hand, I want them to see that I value them and our family enough to devote so much of my time and energy to being a mother. If this is the girl job I choose to show them, then what a mother should look like becomes fraught with meaning.

What should a mother look like?

Should a mother look like a clean home and dinner on the table and clean-faced toddlers and Mary Kay cosmetics?

In some ways (surprisingly), yes:

A clean house is worth pursuing because the cleaner and more organized things are, the easier it is for kids to play, create, and feed themselves, which leads, of course, to a messy house, but it’s a worthwhile cycle because the more the kids can do for themselves, the more I can do (and the more they are learning and growing), not because with a clean house I can be “unafraid to open the door if someone drops in.”

A table set for dinner when Dick arrives home and happy smiling children is worth working towards because it means the girls have learned to cheerfully help in the kitchen and that we have successfully worked together to create something we will all enjoy, not because it means I’ve worked behind the scenes to set a pretty stage.

Three daughters groomed for church or school (or dad’s homecoming) is a triumph when it means I have exchanged meaningful words with them while the hairbrush was in my hand, not when it means I’ve harped impatiently for them to JUST HOLD STILL.

And the Mary Kay cosmetics? Few things feel better than a hot shower after a hard workout or hours spent languishing with the morning sickness in bed.

Some things do, though. There are days, too infrequent, when Dick comes home and I look up from the book I’m reading or the story I’m writing, and I see the clock says 6:30 pm, and there are legos and Barbies on the carpet, paint and glitter glue on the table, clementine peels and yogurt containers all over the kitchen. Perhaps wet snow clothes are draped over chairs and I am smelly and muzzy from forgetting I even have a body. Dick is unperturbed (I chose well), and I wonder if I look then as a mother should — lost in thought.

I think I do.

The first night Dick, Sally, and I spent in Egypt, the power went out while Sally and I were in the tub soaking away twenty-eight hours of traveling. Our bawwab (part doorman, part concierge, part decrepit old man), knew enough English (or simple human nature) to gather that I liked Mountain Dew rather a lot. (I had worried before we left New York if there would even be Mountain Dew in Cairo, but I knew they’d have Coke, so I wasn’t hysterical or anything).

Our bawwab (whose name I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember) took us on a convoluted walk from our nice, clean neighborhood to a cramped, dusty part of town only a mile away, and he treated me to a Mountain Dew in an old-fashioned glass bottle from the bodega next to the house where he lived.

Then he took us into his house and introduced us to his family. They lived in 200 (300?) square feet and he was proud of it. His wife was shy, and his kids were grown.

Later that week, he brought a woman to our apartment. Nadya was a widow with three teenage sons. She wanted to be our maid. Dick and I had read that most ex-pats employed maids, cooks, nannies and/or drivers, and that this was encouraged as a way of contributing to the local economy. It was criminally inexpensive to employ Nadya, and I was really excited to have a maid. We agreed that she would come in two hours a day, five days a week to clean our 1200 square foot, 3-bedroom apartment.

Nadya made our beds and washed the dishes. It was in Cairo that I learned to cook from scratch, and I mean scratch: cream of chicken soup not from a can, tortillas, cottage cheese from milk and vinegar. So there were many dishes each morning. Nadya swept and mopped the wood and tile floor. She brought cheap toys for Sally, toys that sang annoying Egyptian songs (and if you think Barney is bad, try a Ramadan dolly) that I couldn’t throw away for fear that she would see them in the trash that she took out.

I couldn’t handle it. When we came back to Cairo from our summer break in the States, Dick and I fired Nadya. We found the loss of privacy to be disturbing (perhaps our fault for having her come in almost every day), and Nadya didn’t always clean up to my standards. But mostly I just felt so uncomfortable with the whole setup. A few months later, when I was on bedrest with Susan for awhile, we hired our friend’s maid to help out. She was younger, sassier. Somehow it didn’t bother me to give her cleaning instructions.

Whenever I think about the logistics of our housekeeping issues in the four years we’ve been back, I think of Nadya. I wish we hadn’t fired her. I hope she found other work. I hope her sons, who I never met, and never bought presents for, are happy and grown.

I daydream sometimes about having a cleaning service, but I don’t know if I could ever do that to Nadya.

But I hate cleaning. I hate that any of my life has to be taken up with cleaning, and I hate that having a messy, dirty house makes me so grumpy. I hate that our lives run bumpier when I let things get as bad as they are right now.

Here are my answers to the questions I asked on Tuesday:

1. Our house is 1600 sq ft, with a 700 sq ft unfinished basement (2300 total). We’ve got 2 adults, 3 kids, and will never have any pets. Ever. Insha’Allah.

2. Some days I spend 30 minutes and some days 2 hours cleaning (including dishes but not laundry). And, occasionally, there is a 36-hour stretch when I feed the kids cereal and hotdogs on paper plates and spend negative-5 minutes on cleaning. Then there are other days it seems I spend 4-5 hours. I think a system of steady, spread-out effort might be something nice.

3. I don’t work for money now, but I think I spent less time cleaning when I did work and Dick was home with Sally when he was getting his Master’s degree. I know that we fought a lot then about Saturday cleaning. He would want to go sightsee in Manhattan, and I would insist that my mom said we had to do our Saturday chores. When I finally gave up quoting his mother-in-law to him and started enjoying Saturday morning outings in the city, life got much happier.

4. NO, Dick doesn’t help (enough). NO, the kids are punks. And I have NO IDEA how to get family to help. (I mean, I know I should do charts, and stickers and privilege-withholding and make it fun and be a team and praise sub-par efforts and not nag and see the good, but still. NO IDEA.)

5. The other day a church lady came to train me on Boy Scout stuff, and I’d completely forgotten. Had not showered, there was a poopy diaper (all taped up) on the living room floor, and it was fine. But usually I do make an extra effort. Last Sunday for our extended family dinner, I had to choose between cleaning up and driving 1 1/2 hours roundtrip to my sister’s house. We drove.)

6. Yes – housecleaning/house-messiness/housecleaning-inequity makes me mad and it makes me mad that it makes me mad.

7. Before there was blogging, I read five books a day if it meant blocking out the mess. So, yes and no.

—

I wish I’d known this topic would generate such interest (usually I am clueless about which posts will be “successful” comments-wise); I would’ve made a poll to more easily report the averages. I feel like most people reported cleaning 1-2 hours a day, usually not including laundry, and often not including dishes/meal prep. Either we are all super-efficient or we’re under-reporting our cleaning load. In a study by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, married women with no children spent 17 hours a week, and women with more than three children spent 28 hours. If I assume roughly 3 hours extra per kid, then I should be cleaning about 26 hours a week.

I think my house would be really clean if I spent that much time cleaning, and I think we all probably spend more time than we think, AND I think I should keep a cleaning journal for a couple weeks to see how I could improve. I’ve been planning to keep a spending journal for approximately seven years now, and I’m pretty sure that if I only did these things, many mysteries of the universe would be unfolded.

But back to Nadya, and Beth‘s comment about her mother-in-law’s advice:

I just want to say that the best marital advice I got was from my mother-in-law who told me to always have somebody else clean the house. She said it would resolve so many marital disputes and indeed I think she is right. She even went so far as to cover the cost of one while David and I were both laid off from work – she is that passionate about the importance of one in a marriage.

Nadya, and not having to nag Dick to clean, and having money (even on our poor teacher’s salary) to go out to eat and cruise down the Nile, all made living in Cairo quite enjoyable. Having a third party responsible and accountable for much of the cleaning does make a marriage run smoother.

But I can’t shake the feeling that I should clean up after my own self. That somehow I should learn to do it with grace and elegance. And that teaching my daughters to value hard work and the rewards of cleanliness and order is one of the greatest gifts I could give them.

That I will grow into a better person as I discipline myself and serve my children and husband. (Gag. Did I just say that?)

I don’t know. Maybe someone should send me money to try the maid experiment again, this time with a nice, impersonal service. In the interests of science and the future of mankind, it’s really only fair that I keep an open mind.

Jane

Make sure you check out Kikibibi’s “Mrs. Brown” story in the comments!

Comment of the day from Laura (who is just cracking me up lately):

Everyone says that the act of keeping a food journal actually decreases calorie intake. What if I started a cleaning journal and it decreased the amount of time I cleaned… I predict disastrous results. So for now I will keep neither, because I obviously need all those calories for the cleaning I’m doing.

2. How many hours a day do you spend cleaning?

3. Do you work for money in or out of the home? Do you clean more/less if (now that) you have a paying job?

4. Are you successful at getting hubs (or wife, my two, dear male readers) or kids (what age?) to help? HOW?

5. Do you clean frantically before guests (your mother-in-law) come?

6. Does housecleaning/house-messiness/housecleaning-inequity affect your daily contentment?

7. Have you discovered how effective blogging is at procrastinating/blocking out messes?

Jane

Freudian Slip of the Day from Laura: “I work for a meager penance watching my niece from home. I probably clean more now that I am home more, but less than I thought I would when I quit my job.”  (I think she meant pittance but I am often sure that my kids are a penance, too!)

Anyway, you’re supposed to look like you just woke up when you JUST WOKE UP. But what about your house? If you’re a good home manager (as opposed to a good homemaker a la Martha Stewart), if you’re efficient and organized and motivated, your house theoretically could look pretty good in the morning.

Right?

Once my house looked so good in the morning that even when I took pictures of the great bead flood of 2008, Sharla felt bad enough about her own kitchen that she had to leave my post forthwith and go clean up. Well, Sharla, have I got a surprise for you.

There have been days when I have shined my sink, and great is the rapture of the fresh start that greets me in the morning.

This morning, however, was not such a day.

This morning, when I stumbled from my bed at 9:45 (I read a book last night, sue me. And Sally knows how to work the remote and the kids can all scavenge for food, which is both solution and problem), this is what I saw:

Remember that things always look slightly BETTER in pictures.

I’d point out what’s wrong with this picture, but close-ups will better serve the interests of full disclosure. (Only, notice the three garbage cans in the middle left; two of those belong in the bathrooms upstairs. I emptied them, but, uh, didn’t quite get them back upstairs. In three days time. Oh, and the box above the trash cans is full of books from the library book sale. Because our house is just so EMPTY.)

But first, the opposite view:

Sports bra (dirty), overturned diaper basket, laundry (clean), fort (rather modest in scale).

Now on to the good shots:

Will not attempt to describe in this short caption space.

(L-R) Dried up mac and cheese (originally homemade, with whole-wheat noodles, for what it’s worth) from lunch yesterday; Watercolor set (not at all dried out); Bin of stuff from the van (which I cleaned out in order to fit the seat back in for our new carpool, and which someone apparently mistook for the pajama and/or snow clothes bin); Crusty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (from an old bottle of peanut butter, so I’m not worried about salmonella. The kids finally made themselves sandwiches last night after accepting that Mom was ignoring them to futile-y wrestle her minivan post into submission, and Dad napped on the couch); Yogurt and juice boxes (which we save for special trips / nights when Mom and Dad are as good as gone); Glass jewelry beads (which Sally and her new friend, see carpool, made into 74 bracelets and necklaces yesterday afternoon).

Avert your eyes if you have a food handler's permit.

At this point Dick wailed that he was starving. Since he is hard at work freelancing to support my new Arctic Circle habit, and since I was hungry by now anyway, I interrupted my urgent picture-taking to make pancakes. And then I had to take a picture of this lovely tableau: Still-life of Batter, Hairgel, Mostly-Empty Rubbermaid Container, Craft Supplies, and Elixir of Life. (In the far right in cellophane is a fake-ceramic treasure I rescued from the DI (thrift store) last week. It figures prominently in my new series One Parent-Volunteer’s Junk: Another Parent-Slacker’s Prize.)

Once fortified with righteous carbs and fresh buttermilk syrup, I returned to my anthropological quest:

Jam doesn't really need to be refrigerated, right?

(L-R) Stuffed animals and food preparation go together so well (“Eating and driving, it’s as handy as skiing and doing your taxes. If my dinner reeks, I’ll put it in the trunk”*); When will those darn kids learn that we clean up after ourselves in this house? (How long has that banana been out?); More yogurt, Dishes from the late-night bacon and eggs meal Dick and I had once Oliver and co. were trundled off to bed.

"It's fun to make dirty things clean and shining again."**

(L-R) Coupons I will save until they expire, never remembering to use them; Yes, Susan, the dishes in the dishwasher are clean, WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?; Plant growth chart of Sally’s that I’ll use in a WFMW post to demonstrate the proper way to raise curious, creative, DIY children; Dishes from Thursday night (or was it Wednesday?); Fetid smell from (long-)standing water; Empty (sob) brownie pan; Goo Gone for the bird poop on Dick’s coat that turned out to be gum from the bus.

And finally, a few shots of the floor, though you’ll have to trust me on the ice-melt-and-sand drippings everywhere from our winter boots, and the crumbs and beads and general unhealthiness:

Because the trash can was SO FAR AWAY.

This is why it pays to keep a clean house. People are slightly more likely to throw trash away if the entire house does not look like one big dumpster. (I think. At least, I imagine that would be a benefit of habitual tidiness.)

I think Susan TRIED to clean this up.

This watercolor rinse water wouldn’t be so bad if A) it hadn’t taken me longer to photograph it than it would have taken me to wash it up and B) it hadn’t been there for at least a week.

There you have it: What my house really looks like, before the makeup and primping and good lighting.

And in case you’re thinking that a messy house is a fine trade off for a rich creative life and a stunning personal appearance, I shall inflict my much-revised-to-no-effect minivan post on you sometime next week, and here is what I really look like, first thing in the morning (and often in the afternoon, and sometimes (when Dick is REALLY LUCKY) in the evening):

Sharla? YOU'RE WELCOME

Jane

*A Clarification, of sorts*

I don’t want to be defensive about this — in fact, I think I owe it to myself to own this mess, to not shrink or be ashamed of it. I’m the one who’ll be cleaning it up later, so who cares if it’s messy for a couple hours or a couple days while I read Barbara Michaels’ gothic mysteries? I want to be free, FREE I tell you, from housewifely expectations. There are 4 (okay, 3 — Spot, at 2 1/4 years-old is a bit young) other people at my house who are more than welcome to pitch in ANY TIME.

But a few notes to clarify: (1) This happened today, Saturday, so no school was missed and Dick was home and capable of (if not interested in) supervising the kids while I slept in. (2) My house doesn’t always look like this. It certainly does sometimes, though, with today being a bit extreme, which is why today was a good day to take pictures. (3) We had a maid for over a year when we lived in Cairo. It was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, for my little bourgeouis self. Will post more on that later.

Thank you for the kind comments. I was surprised by how much of a reaction it got. I would love to start an entire carnival based on True FULL Monty Pictures of Whatever Mess One Needs To Own, but seriously? My comment anxiety is NOTHING compared to my Mr. Linky-Carnival anxiety. If you do write a FULL Monty post of your own and link back here, please tell me about it, and I’ll add your link to the body of this post. (That sort of link is “worth” more technorati-ally and google-analytically speaking than a Mr. Linky link anyway.)

Also, I would love to see your FULL Monty pictures — in posts or emails. I certainly understand the reluctance to post these online. There was a time not too long ago that I would have hated to have my mother-in-law see that her grandchildren sometimes have to negotiate crusty noodles and curdling yogurt. But somehow these anxieties are slight compared to the truly important things in life (like comment anxiety ).

*Some Kind of Wonderful

**Anne of Windy Poplars

{Back to Bloggy Giveaway Carnival Post}

In a stunning gesture that MY HUSBAND COULD LEARN A LOT FROM, Brad hopes to surprise Hannah with new sheets when they both get home. It sounds like Hannah has been dropping subtle hints, subtle enough that Brad, who despite being a good husband is still a man, had no idea where to begin. Flannel? Silk? Cotton? Hemp? Thread-count? He wondered if he should wash them before using them the first time. (Yes, unless you want the option of returning them, then No).

These look rather slippery to me.

There are a lot of sheet options (Bamboo? Felt? Cotton-Poly), so I devised the following quiz to help OTHER HUSBANDS WHO WISH TO SURPRISE THEIR WIVES. Women can take the quiz to make their hints less subtle, and men, answer with your wife in mind. Forgive the irresponsible over-generalization, but I don’t think most men care what the sheets are made of, as long as your lovely body graces them.

What Kind of Sheet Are You?

1. Your favorite breakfast is:

a) Granola with Soy Milk
b) Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes
c) Eggs Benedict, Extra Hollandaise
d) Crepes with Berries and Creme Fraiche
e) Quiche Lorraine

2. You Usually Sleep:

a) In an untidy sprawl.
b) Left side
c) Spooning
d) Right side
e) Fetal position

3. Your favorite movie is:

a) Juno
b) Sound of Music
c) Sex and the City
d) The Philadelphia Story
e) Xanadu

4. Your idea of recreation is:

a) Raising llamas
b) Reading a book in the window seat
c) Day at the spa
d) Metropolitan Museum Costume Gala
e) Roller Derby

Results
Mostly A’s: Flannel
Mostly B’s: Jersey Knit
Mostly C’s: Silk or Satin
Mostly D’s: 1200 Thread-count 100% Egyptian Cotton
Mostly E’s: Cotton/Polyester Blend

Now that you know what kind of sheets to buy, remember to wash them twice a year, whether they need them or not. And one final hint: if you have a king-size bed, you can write “foot” on both ends of the fitted sheet so you can easily tell which way they go. My sister and mom draw big arrows too, but I’m not sure that’s necessary.

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It’s not a matter of intelligence, of course. Dick went to graduate school at an Ivy League Institution, but really that is nothing compared to the fact that last night he cleaned up copious amounts of Sally’s spaghetti vomit. He even threw the bedding in the washing machine.

I know, I know: I should be happy that he knows where the washer and dryer are, and stop with the quibbling about how it gets done. So, I will restrict myself to giving one simple tip for Man Laundry. A tip that I know Dick is eager to learn.

Eager because he actually asked me today why I buy liquid detergent when it has such a serious design flaw. And he might have a point. Men often approach household matters from a fresh, innovative perspective.

The wisest thing my brother-in-law ever said was in defence of hanging the toilet paper the wrong way. “It’s harder for the kids to unroll it that way.” I ran some experiments to test this theory, and, much as it pains me, I have to say he’s right: It is harder for a malevolent 18-month old to waste an entire roll of toilet paper if it is not flapping on the top.

Man Laundry Tip

To avoid this:

And this:

Rinse the dispenser in the water as it fills the washer. To be more specific: 1) dump the detergent in the washer, 2) fill the dispenser with the water pouring in, 3) dump the dispenser (in the washer), and 4) repeat as necessary.

Dick says that he does rinse the cap once, and I conceded that it often takes seven or eight rinses. Whenever I stand at the washer and rinse the cap, I remember Mr. Raine’s chemistry class, and how he taught us that scientific principle where each time you do something like rinse a cap, you never get all of the detergent out. Instead, each time you get a certain percentage, and so you have to do it over and over to get that same percentage of whatever’s left. You’d think that since I remember this from high school that I’d remember what it was actually called and be able to describe it coherently, but then you’d remember that I have three kids and am lazy.

Anyway, Dick thinks the fact that you have to rinse the cap eight times means that it’s engineered wrong. All I know is that our water is so hard that powdered detergent often doesn’t dissolve, and since I am a granola-girl dropout, I don’t see homemade detergent in my near future. I did buy this liquid stuff at Costco, though, so all the free food samples surely cancel out the flagrant misuse of monetary resources.

Next time we’ll cover:

1) Hot water is for whites, only.

2) Building relationships with pre-wash treatments.

3) Sorting by color is not really optional, especially if #1 has not been mastered.

4) Not drying shrinkable, favorite pieces of clothing (especially if your wife is getting fatter anyway).

5) Removing crayons from pockets BEFORE placing in dryer (bonus points for not mentioning that your wife has done that one before).

Any other ideas for Man Laundry Tips?

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