I’m a control freak. It’s ok, I’m old enough that I can admit it. I like to be in control, but I have three small children, so control isn’t something that I have a lot of.

I find myself looking for little things I can control, things like how clean the kitchen floor is.

I use these little things as a way to make up for the control I don’t have over other areas of my life… like how long it takes to leave the house.

Mr. Spreadsheets will tell you, that in addition to being a control freak, I’m also a clean freak.

I can’t sleep with dishes in the sink, I start cleaning the kitchen before everyone is finished with dinner, messes make me anxious… that’s why I avert my eyes when I walk upstairs in an effort to avoid seeing the playroom disaster.

I hate hate hate mess.

If you came to my house, you’d be shocked I feel this way.

Finding control in cleanliness isn’t a new thing for me. I’ve always looked to cleaning as a way to calm down and “fix” a frustrating situation.

Cleaning with three children is… well fairly impossible. You can clean all you want, but nothing stays clean, picked up, or organized. I’ll admit that most of my efforts are wasted, that I’m fighting a losing battle, and that my time would be better spent on something else.

When my kids are adults they are going to complain that their mom was a crazy person when it came to cleaning. They’re going to say that I ruined Christmas and birthdays because I was cleaning up wrapping paper, or that I yelled all the time because they wouldn’t pick up their underwear, why is their underwear in the kitchen by the way?

Because the mess is so large I’ve had to work out a system for getting things done. My original system was to spend an entire day (maybe just 4 hours) scrubbing the house. This did not actually work. By the end I was tired and cranky, and the kids had made an even bigger mess because I had to ignore them to get anything done. No one liked this system. As much as I would love everything to be clean all at once, I’ve come to the realization it won’t happen until I either sell the kids or hire a cleaning lady… neither or which is going to happen.

So we developed a new system, based on the system the Cleaning Mama has on her website. This schedule is lovely, it focuses on one task each day, with the idea that the task should take no more than 30 minutes per day. This may not result in a spotless house, but it does result in a livable house.

Developing a system has allowed me to give myself permission to let some things slid until the schedule brings them up again. For example, Bathroom day is Monday. Last week, I cleaned the bathrooms Monday, but on Wednesday the boys did a toothpaste “experiment” in the downstairs bathroom. We cleaned up most of the mess, but didn’t scrub the bathroom. Trust me, I wanted to. I wanted to scrub every inch of that place, but I reminded myself that I could tackle the rest of the bathroom the following monday. The piece of mind knowing that the task would get done (eventually), but that I didn’t have to do it immediately (beyond initial cleanup) was freeing. Seriously, I’m a bit too obsessive about this cleaning thing.

So if you need me, I’ll be sweeping the floor for the 10,000th time today.