Coming Home To A Clean House

We just got back from vacation. And when I walked in the front door, I experienced one of my favorite parts.

Disclaimer: NOT my house!

Coming home to a clean house.

Every mother knows how important it is to have the house completely clean when you leave for vacation. But am I the only one with a family that just does not understand the vital importance of this ingredient to a Mom's enjoyment of the vacation?

Is anyone else ever told, "But Mom, it will be here when we get back!"

EXACTLY!
What about that statement is supposed to make me feel better?

There are huge problems with the statement, "It will be here when get back" reveals.

And these problems are why, when my family says that statement it has the opposite effect than they hoped.

Because these problems convince me to work harder on the house instead of leaving the "life" that inevitably gets spread around on the flat surfaces of my home.

Here are the problems:

1. If it (and be IT I mean the "life", aka- messiness) is still here, in the home, and we have a bad wreck, and other people come into our home (including my Mother, by the way) to help us out....then they would see how we "really live" and the secret would be out.
2. Or in that really bad wreck in Reason 1, if in that wreck I died, then I would never be able to explain to those who showed up to my house that we never really lived like this, and this had just been a very busy week, and actually I am usually much better at keeping my home. Really. I am.
3. Okay, morbid thinking aside, even if I don't have a car wreck on the way to vacation or on the way home... if I don't clean my house before I leave for vacation, I am making lists of what needs to be done when I do get home. In my head. On scraps of paper. All the time. On my vacation. Gee, that sounds swell!
4. And then there is the worst thing about the "It will be here when we get back" statement. That is the fact that IT WILL BE HERE WHEN WE GET BACK. I will be coming home to WORK.  I will move from relaxing and resting into full scale "Operation Recover and Clean-up" when I get home. 

Call me crazy, but No Thank You!

I would much rather anticipate the happy moment of  opening the door to a clean, orderly, non-lived-in home.

And I would much rather revel in the few moments that it stays that way.

Because now that we are home.....

It will be, well, yeah, "lived in" again. Welcome home! Let the unpacking begin!

Oh well. At least it was perfectly clean while we gone!