This morning I woke up sweaty, but oddly not hot, between two toddlers. Eventually I realized that it was not sweat... one of them had wet the bed; when that one awoke, the two of us took a shower. The other toddler was spared moisture. But... The reason that toddler was in my bed was that they had also wet their bed in the night, and their father had changed them in the wee hours and delivered them to my bed. After everyone was up for the day I ran two loads of wash...
Yesterday, I peered behind the washing machine where the kitten has been playing in some fallen-behind papers, only to discover he has been using them as his litter box. Ew!!! I haven't gotten around to cleaning up back there yet, but we blocked his entrance, and in frustration, he pooped on the singular toddler bed which had not been peed in the night. I discovered this only because I thought it would be worth throwing that sheet in the wash, too, and was greeted with this nasty present.
Normally one is supposed to have more litter boxes than cats. We were doing fine with three cats and two litter boxes (see: 840 square foot cabin.) The day NASA came home we got a kitten-sized litter pan from a neighbor. It had been installed under my bedroom desk. But the little guy outgrew it one day, and started peeling out the side. That was fun to clean up. Cat pee on the wool area rug. Can pee soaking into the wood floor. Wet litter underneath the file cabinet. It took several days of treatments outdoors for the rug odor to be acceptable, and one side is rather sun faded now... Anyway, at that time, NASA had a strong preference for the two laundry/mud/dining/kitchen annex boxes, so I was happy to reduce the load. But no longer!!!
... So I got home with the new litter box this afternoon, (and Anne came running to tell me that Feathers - who has never chased another animal- was holding a mole in her jaws and had stopped her and freed the little critter!) and in order to set it up, I had to sweep my bedroom, which was covered in tiny scraps of recycling, trash, food crumbs, and popcorn. I will take credit for a percentage of the popcorn, but not the rest of it. And while sweeping I managed to knock mypopcorn container off the shelf and dump another cup or so of kernels into the mix. And in running back and forth to the trash can, I noticed that one or more toddlers had scribbled on the wall with dry erase markers while I was out, so I set out to clean that. (A week ago yesterday I had already spent some good time cleaning the backlog of pencil, marker, crayon, and oil pastel off walls, doors, and trim.) I confiscated all remaining dry erase markers. Then I got the new bag of litter out of the Mr. Chewy box sitting in the middle of the living room and proceeded to spill some of that while filling up. But the living room already looked like the clothes dryer, a block factory, and a recycling factory vomited, so I picked up the floor and swept there, too. Week's worth of laundry on the couch still waiting to be folded...
This somehow reminds me of the time about a week ago when my toddlers got into the permanent art markers while I was teaching and dumped out half a gallon of popcorn kernels in my bedroom. In the course of cleaning that up, I did find the sewing machine presser foot inside the floor vent under my desk, which had last been seen attached to the sewing machine on the shelf in the top do my closet, and had torn apart the closet looking for it... No clue how exactly it ended up there.
Last Sunday, one of my kids had a stomach bug, so between that and one or three of our cats, the living room rug got barfed an unspecified large number of times. Also last Sunday, I endeavored to clean up a fort the kids were still enjoying but I was not. This involved pulling the love seat out into the middle of the living room, picking up all the toys and debris left behind, doing a massive sweep up and floor mopping, washing Black Bean' s bed which he sleeps on under the love seat, and untangling all the cables associated with the modem and router, bundling them neatly, and tucking them into a containment box under the love seat (the latter project I have had in mind for a couple of years but have put off due to lack of executive function or finding all kinds of other things more compelling in the moment.)
Tuesday Jared got to snake out the tub, as there were some crafts done in there involving water (obviously) and construction paper bits. And due to the back up, some of us had missed a day or two of bathing.
Oh, and yesterday he swept and mopped the kitchen, dining, laundry area, but you can't tell now. (Actually, he sweeps that area once or twice a day anyway.) The furniture has been completely rearranged such that in order to traverse the area one has to climb. Also, a bucket of chalk has been used as a "bomb", there are random toys, shreds of recycling, crumbs, and dirty clothes and dishes on the floor, and a large independent cooking project which hasn't been cleaned up (or even eaten!) yet...
The week before last, NASA inherited a lovely, tall cat tree which Jeffrey and Linda delivered, mentioning it should be vacuumed. Yes, indeed! It was dirty. And both our vacuums died on the same day in December. (We are thinking of finally buying a new one this weekend!) Anyway, I trotted off to borrow a handheld from a neighbor, and it held its charge through the first half of the job. After that, I finished it by sweeping and cat comb. In order to put it in the kid's little bedroom, we had to rearrange some furniture which involved a big clean up, and revealed copious amounts more trash and recycling scraps and food crumbs. We normally make very little trash, but we filled the bin that fortnight.
On the plus side, since my massive rearrangement of the bathroom, the weekly toddler floodings are cleaned up in under five minutes with only one load of laundry and none of the pond scum mildew.
Oh, and hey, after a few too many incidents we have a new family rule that if you want to use lotion for a prank, you need to buy your own lotion with your own money.
All this to say, if you feel frustrated with your housekeeping, you have my sympathies. Truly. And also, unless you are my parents who have 14 cats, I'm pretty confident my house keeping woes are just a little bit worse than yours.
