Neat Freak?

Some people compliment me on my amazingly clean home considering how many children I have. I smile and thank them, secretly cringing at the thought of anyone ever looking into my closets or my bedroom. If they only knew...

Whenever company is coming, or a case worker, or the kids' attorney, or their CASA, or therapists or our certification worker or or or... okay, we get a LOT of people coming to check on our kids and our home every month.. but anyway, when someone's coming, we clean the house top to toe. We clear off surfaces to make it look like a show home. We scrub doors and walls and counters and floors. We shine the windows and mirrors and sinks until the whole house is magazine shoot ready.

Or, at least, we do that in the public areas. We do the living areas, kitchen, bathrooms, and the kids' bedrooms. But our dirty little secret is the master bedroom. We clean it so that it looks nice if you just open the door and glance in. But if you actually entered, you would see piles of stuff we grabbed out of the main areas of our home and piled haphazardly in corners of our room and hid in our walk-in closet. We throw the kids' toys into buckets and stack it in the game closet. We clear the bathroom counters by tossing hair accessories under the sink. It's all a mad dash to simulate an immaculately clean home. And it works rather well!

But then, every three months or so, I start to get annoyed with the hidden clutter. Then I tackle all those frightening little spots around the house and clean and organize them until I throw out my back from all the unaccustomed manual labor. This photo of our toy/game closet is exhibit A. Will it look like that a few weeks later? Definitely not. Will it look like this again in a few months? Yes it will. You'll know when you see me limping to church that a cleaning demon possessed me that week.