My Kitchen is Spotless

Trying to get my kids to pick up their toys and put them in the basket usually involves various manipulations: “How many can you put away in the time I count to ten?!” “Who can put the books away the fastest?” and, the unfortunate, “I swear, I will throw all of these out in five seconds if you don’t put them away–here I am going to get a trash bag! Seriously, here I go! I’ll do it!”

But when they saw me scrubbing the kitchen molding with a toothbrush, you would have thought that I was eating fistfuls of jellybeans. “Please, me do that?!” “Mine, mine?” and “Can I help? Can I have a toothbrush? Can I do this part, too? Look at how clean I got this!” And the next day: “Can we clean with toothbrushes again?! Please?!”

Damn right you can…but do you know how weird you guys are?

And two little vacuum cleaners have whipped these children into a daily cleaning frenzy. The dog doesn’t even have time to coat the kitchen floor with fur since these guys have started their vacuuming obsession.

Not that I don’t love this…but I still think they’re weird.

Although…not really. It’s remarkable how sometimes I see something as a chore while they see an interesting task–pulling weeds, washing the car, picking up sticks from the lawn… I’m really buying into the “practical life” part of the Montessori school that Martin will go to next year after watching them.

I vaguely remember thinking how cute the flashing-light-colorful-plastic toys were when Martin was a baby until he showed me that they might interest him for a minute, but a shovel and some dirt, some soapy water–or a vacuum cleaner–is where it’s at.