My New, Lower Standard

When I lived in a home occupied only by myself and my spouse, I had high standards of housekeeping. Take my dish towel drawer. It was very organized. There was a neat stack of dish cloths, a stack of washcloths for washing toddler faces, a stack of terry cloth dish towels, and a stack of thin cotton dish towels. At the back of the drawer was stored aprons. My drawer was tidy. My drawer was lovely.

Now I live with three toddlers. I don't separate the dish cloths from the dish towels from the toddler face cloths. I don't fold the dish cloths or the dish towels. All kitchen linens are taken straight from the dryer and tossed into two lower drawers in the kitchen.

Not only do I make no attempt to bring order to the drawer, my standards of cleanliness have also been greatly compromised. I make sure the dirty linens are removed from the kitchen counters and sink every evening and washed weekly and returned clean to the drawer. Unfortunately they don't remain clean in the drawer.

The twins sometimes run to the drawer and grab a wash cloth to clean their faces after they eat. That's a good, helpful habit. I encourage that. What I don't like is when they put the used wash cloth back in the drawer. YUCK!

That's not the only dirty linen returned to the drawer. They also like to use clean towels to mop the kitchen floor and then they return the towels to the drawer. Whenever I catch them in the act, I nab the towel and ask them not to put dirty towels back in the drawer, but I don't think they understand my objections. *sigh*

The fact of the matter is that my standards of both tidiness and cleanliness have been lowered significantly since I started living with Jake and Viva.