Back-Handed compliments...

The other day one of Grace's friends was over playing. The little girl is nice enough and I have met her parents several times at various school functions or during pick up/ drop offs. The other day she was waiting inside the house for her daughter to get her stuff together to go home when she said to me "you keep your house really clean, I only wish..." I sort of smiled and replied with the standard "well, I like a clean house". She kind of smiled and then said "imagine if you didn't have to clean so much how much free time you would have, to play with the kids and stuff...." I didn't really know what to say, not knowing this woman enough to tell her to screw off and being too polite to spit on her, I simply smiled.

While I know this should not bug me and should not merit a rant on the blog, it's going to get one. I like my house clean and I am not sure what exactly is wrong with that. I stay home with my kids, drive them to every sporting event they have, host their friends at our house almost daily, tuck them in every night, eat dinner with them every evening, and I don't spend enough time with them??

I grew up for several years with a single mom. She worked full time to provide for us and would then come home everyday and cook dinner, play with us, read to us, tuck us in, make our lunches for the next day, wait for my Grandma to come over and then go back out for another few hours to clean office buildings while we slept to make extra money. I had no idea while growing up that we had no money, in fact I thought we had plenty. We had nice clothes, lots of toys, a nice clean house, etc...I can remember being small and my mom cleaning up, she would play the music loud and we would dance around the house to Tina Turner and Lionel Ritchie. We were always told that we should never take things or people for granted. We should tell the people we love that we love them, we should spend time with our family and friends, and that if you were lucky enough to own something it should be taken care of, this went for our house as well. My mom was proud of our little house, she would always say that it doesn't matter how much something cost, it should be taken care of.

When my mom remarried she married a man with a great job, a big house and money to spare. This didn't change her, she made sure the house was always clean. She would tell us to live in a mess was in a way showing disrespect for the time it took her earn the money to pay for the item. I guess it just stuck with me...

Phil and I work hard both in and out of the home and we feel that to live in a mess models a sense of disrespect for our kids. I am the first to acknowledge that people and time are far more precious than material goods, but to not care for what you have is a slippery slope. I want my kids to value things in life. I want them to value their bodies, to do this we as parents eat healthy and exercise. If we simply sat around eating crap food and then wondered how our kids joined the ranks of the growing childhood obesity epidemic, we would be kidding ourselves. If we left piles of dishes in the sink and garbage laying around and then wondered why our kids didn't take better care of their toys, we again would be kidding ourselves.

Now don't get me wrong my house is not in prefect condition, far from it. There are dings in the wall that have been filled and sanded but lack paint. There are toys on the floor in various rooms of the house, and I think I may have left the tub toys in the bath after last nights scrub down. I don't spend hours on end cleaning and I don't miss out on the activities of my family simply because my house is tidy...I think next time I will just tell her to screw off.