metaphortunate | unfucking or something

Crossposts: http://metaphortunate.livejournal.com/79323.html

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unfucking or something

We've had to get serious about the housekeeping since having the little monkeys. Crawling babies will eat anything they run into on the floor. AN. EE. THING. Do they take a moment to ask themselves, is this food? Was it food a month ago? Did it fly in the house a month ago? Is it bigger than my throat? Are mom and dad weeping blood and screaming "NOOOOO!" as they race my fat little fist to my mouth? Do they balls. Babies: masters of the fucks ungiven, so we have had to learn some cleaning tips and tricks! One of which I will now share with you.

So maybe you've had dinner. You're cleaning up. You wipe down the table and briskly go to sweep up some of the steady shower of food that falls like plankton rain from the incompetent hands of toddlers. Hold on there, cowboy! Not so fast. See, if you try to sweep the food up right away, if it's something like steamed cauliflower, it'll squish to the floor and all over the bristles of your broom. What you want to do is let it dry out overnight, so you can easily sweep it up in the morning without getting down on the floor and scrubbing. Timesaving! That is just one of the many classy touches that keeps our house so sparkling tidy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm ready to take over Hints from Heloise. Next week: why sterilizing your baby bottles is a myth!

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While not precisely relevant to the drying of the cauliflower, I will say, even sans sprout, that the second best money I've spent is the money we pay someone to come clean house twice a week.

(The best money I have spent is the money we spent on professional movers)

We are lucky enough to also be able to get someone to come in and do a thorough cleaning regularly. But they don't come every day, and the kids eat every day.

On weekends they eat faster than I can clear away plates. D:

Twice a week! Impressed. We do once a month.

Argh, Braino (not typo). Once every two weeks, not twice a week.

Ahhh, okay. We've considered taking it up to that level, now that we have kids. 1x/mo at least means that we virtually never have to worry about cleaning behind the toilets or whatever it is grownups are supposed to do.

Seriously, FWIW, once the stuff is dry, some kids help happily with sweeping up from 2.5-3yo. We have a little Daiso broom and dustbin, but anything similarly wee would do. (Though I'm not a neat freak, my kid wanted to wipe up emulatingly from 18 mo, which is probably precocious. The 2.5+ comes from daycare/preschool observations.)

Oh, I know! The Junebug has his own little broom. He was more interested in it about half a year ago, but still kind of.

On the other hand, three-year-old help is not exactly precisely help.

This is true. It can grow, though--hang in there. (This evening, since tooth-brushing was delayed for good reasons, my daughter and I folded two loads of laundry. Without complaint. Four years and one month.)

One of the most terrible things I could do to the LF was to ground him from vacuuming. It was his favorite!

:))

Buying a Dust Buster was better choices I made as a parent. Little kids can use them pretty easily, and even 3 yo help with one is actually helpful.

Food on the floor is why I got a dog. So not an issue. ;)

Every time I have to clean around the kids' chairs I think about getting a dog.

Every time I wipe their butts I remember that we are not getting any more butts in this house at LEAST until the kids can be responsible for their own butts.

<3

This. This. And again, this. Both of these thises.

groovy!bb has finally gotten over her habit of eating hairs off the floor, thank fuck. She's mostly pretty smart, but somehow the concept of "every single other time I have attempted to eat a hair, it has caused me to cough and hack and scream, so maybe I should not attempt to eat this one" was beyond her for like a year.

(One time she found one of Piper's three-foot-long hairs on my couch and she clearly could not believe her luck. She was PISSED when I took that one away.)

What you want to do is let it dry out overnight,
Unless it is Weetabix (do you have Weetabix over there?). That stuff sets solid like concrete and you are still chiselling bits off the kitchen table with sharp implements months, if not years, later.

I don't know anything about Weetabix, but I have had the same experience with various types of cereal-and-milk. *chisel chisel*

AHAHAHA ILU.

Next week: why sterilizing your baby bottles is a myth!

Re: the hygiene hypothesis, check out this 1916 photo from National Geographic. Two well-dressed but FILTHY toddlers sitting in a pile of mucky hay and eating apples with filthy, filthy hands and faces. Possibly there is some mother screaming "Wait, you haven't washed your hands!!!" over the photographer's shoulder, but I doubt it.

It makes me feel better about my own slacker approach to hand-washing with my kids, because even I am not *that* cavalier! See, I'm a hygiene moderate after all....

My grandmother used to say that you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die. I figure might as well get him started on it now.

That's a great photo. :)

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