Mary Poppins Was Full Of It

Just a spoonful of sugar my youknowwhat.  Sure, it's easy to clean up an entire playroom in the time it takes you to sing a song when all you have to do is snap your fingers to get the toys to fall in line.  Even better when you have kids to snap THEIR fingers instead.

But what about me?  I seem to have missed the part where I sign up for that finger-snapping power.  If anyone knows how to get that, I'll be first in line.  Shoot, I'll even skip the finger-snapping and just settle for blinking power like Jeannie, or nose wiggle power like Samantha.

Alas, I'm just little ole me.  With only two hands and half hearted motivation to clean.  I think I severely underestimated how much of an ongoing job housekeeping for a family of 6 is.  I try to remember what it was like when we just had one princess.  I was working outside the home full time at that point, and the hubs was in grad school and working part time as well.  So I'm not under any illusion that we had MORE time to ourselves.  In fact, we probably had less.  But there were only 3 of us (well, 4 if you count our boy-dog).  And no matter how you add it up, 6 is definitely more than 3.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best housekeeper (as my mom nods her head in agreement.  I don't think she ever got me to do my own laundry when I lived at home).  I manage the day to day OK, but there are some things that just don't make it into my daily (or weekly, or ever) lineup of chores.  I care about them, but I guess I don't care about them enough to spend my precious time on them.

I think I need a Mary Poppins.  Just someone who can waltz in once and awhile and work their magic on my house.  I don't need them to do much.  Just the things that have fallen to the bottom of the housekeeping priority list:  Dusting (uh, yeah, you can write your name in it), washing windows (who actually DOES this?), steam cleaning carpets (why oh why did we not buy a house with hardwood floors?!), cleaning toilets (OK, I do actually do this, but I don't like to so I think this would fall onto Mary's list as well).

So, ya hear that Mary?  You can fly your little black umbrella right over here and start snapping away.  The dust on my bookshelves await your arrival.

My friends, do you have a Mary to help you keep your head above the housekeeping water?  Or are you treading water with me and slowing sinking?