We all have insecurities. They often manifest in different ways. For me, the floors of our house are more than just floors. They are the status of how good of a wife and mother I am. I know that might sound crazy, but that is just how my mind works. Clean and shiny floors, and I feel pretty good about myself. Nala hair everywhere, baby smeared handprints, and I feel like a failure. The floors of our home represent a deep insecurity for myself. It feels like this impossible task to keep the floors clean. The thing with the floors is no matter how hard I try to keep them clean, they never look that great. I don’t know about you, but the floors act as a pretty good metaphor for my life. I try so hard. I put forth so much effort to be perfect and hold things together with my two, little shaking hands. And the result is always the same. Unsatisfactory floors. I think God laughs at the way I tirelessly sweep our floors. I sweep. I swiffer. I sweep again. Every meal is another sweep. I try to control the mess. I try to bring order to the chaos, but my efforts never seem to be enough. Does this sound familiar to you? It does to me. Love and approval, thankfully, do not come from how tidy the home is and how spotless the floors are. The floors are not the status of how good of a wife I am. The floors, especially with a golden retriever and baby, will never look perfect. Or maybe they will for a few minutes and then meal time will come and there will be puffs and blueberries everywhere. There will be mud tracked paw prints. There will be leaves and twigs. There will be a million little toys strewn everywhere.
This week, we literally have had an inflatable bounce house in the middle of our living room. It was an early birthday present for Hudson. It was a lot of work to get it inflated, so I kept it up for a few days. We also are in the middle of a bathroom remodel, so there is a massive box with our new vanity sitting in our living room. Not to mention, I spilled half a tub of melted vanilla ice cream everywhere last night. Get the picture? Our floors are a chaotic mess over here. I can sweep and organize and shine all I want, but there will be chaos the next day. I guarantee it. So, does that mean we give up? Do we throw away the broom? No, we keep sweeping. But, we sweep without anxiety or stress or need of approval. We sweep to manage the chaos, but thankfully the status of our floors does not represent our status as wives, mothers, Daughters.
Since I am all about creating lists, here are my top 5 ways to manage the floors, without driving yourself insane. The most important thing that is not included in this list is everything I just discussed above. Clean floors are a good thing, but in the whole scheme of life, who really cares that much. I want a clean and pure heart, if my floors are a bit of a mess, I’ll survive.
1. Choose One Day for a Major Clean
Mondays over at the Capel home are for getting things back together. I really don’t do much cleaning at all on the weekends. This is a necessary break and it allows me to be refreshed by Monday to get the house back in order. For us, Monday is the day of the week that I focus on a major clean of our floors. I typically throw all the rugs in the washer, run our Shark Ion Robot (lovingly called Sharky because this robot vacuum makes my life so much easier), and Swiffer afterwards. Truth is, I don’t even spend that much time on this “major” clean. I let the washer and Sharky do their things. The idea here is more about implementing these rhythms so I know the rugs are clean and dust bunnies under the couch are taken care of.
2. Clean Daily for Short Duration
The floors, like the sink and laundry basket, are one of those things that if left even for a day, quickly becomes overwhelming and uncontrolled. Even if I just do a super quick sweep of the floors every evening for 10 minutes, the task of cleaning them becomes more manageable. While the floors are my least favorite things to clean, I have found that the more I can treat them as a daily routine, like making the bed, the easier they become. An hour of cleaning the floors broken up into 5-6 days is so much more enjoyable than a straight 60 minutes of floor cleaning. Break it into daily tasks.
3. Invest in Good Cleaning Products
For a long time we had this terrible vacuum. It was bulky, hard to navigate, and seemed to always leave crumbs. Then, for Christmas, my parents got us the Shark Ion Robot Vacuum, and our carpets have never been cleaner. I run Sharky through all of our carpeted rooms every week. Before, the carpets did not see a vacuum nearly that much. The point here, is the sleeker and easier to use the product, the more likely you will want to clean. Initially, it is a higher investment, but long run it is worth it because you will actually use the product on a regular basis and your house will be cleaner.
4. Pick up Toys Quickly During Naps/Bedtime
It is so easy to get overwhelmed by all the scattered toys that seem to accumulate on a daily basis. It seems so bad with just one baby, I can’t even imagine what it will be like in a few years. I have found the easiest way to manage all the toys, is to do very quick pick-ups when he is asleep. This usually means putting the toys that were out back in the pack ‘n play. Later on, I will go back and organize toys more throughly, but this is a quick way to at least declutter the floors. It is amazing how things already feel cleaner and more organized after just a few minutes of clearing the toys. When he goes down to bed, I am usually exhausted so the idea of cleaning more is never appealing, but I try to consistently take even just 5 minutes to put away all the toys that are out. It is so much nicer to wake up to relatively clean and clear floor.
5. Let it Go
Probably the most important tip of them all. Let. It. Go. My control tendencies have come out in full-force now that we have a kid. I am slowly learning to let go of the little things that I used to lose sleep about. More often than not, my floors are going to look less than perfect. I can guarantee it that Hudson is going to leave the floors a mess every single meal. I can guarantee that Nala is going to shed like it’s her full-time job. I can guarantee that by the end of the day, there will be books, balls, and blocks everywhere. This is just going to happen. We will likely have visitors come at exactly the time where all three of those situations listed above collide at the same time. And I will need to just let it go. I am sure they do not care nearly as much as I do. Remember this: your status as a wife, mom, Christian, women has no basis on how clean your floors are. God is in the heart business, not the floor business.
This Mama Needs Grace 