Clean House Countdown

Well, as I was under the impression that the house was more or less clean (I was wrong, by the way), I thought, why not invite Nabil's family over for Ziad's birthday? Well, we made the invitation, and they made their counter invitation (no, we're not available for dinner, how about lunch?) and the race was on. Approximately 12 hours of frantic housecleaning, involving the entire family, ensued. And now the house really is clean. At least the downstairs part.

Now, I've had the downstairs clean before. And once it gets like that, I always think, OK, the hard part is over, now it never needs to get messy again. And yet, alas, it always does. Why? I don't really know. My hope is that now that the children are older, they can more actively participate in avoiding the mess (i.e., both pick up after themselves and do some cleaning). Sad experience has left me skeptical, I have to say, but hope springs eternal. Maybe this time!

I kind of think we're a flighty bunch (Nabil excepted) who tend to chase our enthusiasms, butterfly-like, without noticing that the chaos is encroaching. Can a regular cleaning schedule come to our aid? Probably not, since I don't even seem to be able to get them to make their beds when they get up in the morning. (How hard should that be?)

Anyway, in an effort to understand, and maybe fix, this problem, I am hereby instituting the clean house countdown: 1 day clean.

Maybe, if the house is still clean downstairs by the end of the week, we could actually get their rooms clean at the same time. Except I think if that happened the universe might explode.