A Lesson From The Tooth Fairy

I spent the day cleaning the house. Spring cleaning. Fall cleaning. Weekly cleaning, all rolled into one. I cleaned the dusty slats on the doors to the family room (can't remember the last time I did that), my own closet and dresser drawers, under the kitchen sink, the shower--even the coffee cupboard. Ick. Some of those places hadn't seen me in quite a while.

I'm really glad it was a cloudy day so I could get a lot done. It felt great to clean and dump accumulated junk. Theraputic almost.

I wondered why I had not taken the time to do it sooner?

And then I ran across this crinkled little note at the bottom of my drawer. It was from Alec when he was just a wee one, the day he lost his tooth in the shower (or so he thought).

After he had written the sweet note, and received his money from the tooth fairy, (I think she remembered that time), we found his tooth floating in the bottom of his water bottle...ick!

Finding this note in the back of my drawer made me think of how fast time flies. I realized that in the long run, although I feel better after my day of cleaning, no one really cares if I ever clean the slats on the family room doors. When I asked Mitch to help me, he couldn't even see the dust.

Hmmmn, he must have selective vision now, in addition to his selective hearing. Just like his father.

I had a brief discussion with a new friend this week. She was super stressed that her house was not in order and she was lagging behind on everything. She has younger kids at home, a successful new blog she is working on, and a few other stresses she is working through.

Having a lovely thing called perspective these days--okay I know, call it what it really is, wisdom gleaned from my advanced age--I told her not to worry. To let it go. Clean what she has to clean to feel better, but enjoy every moment. They go so fast. While a perfectly clean house might make her feel better, no one else really cares, or for that matter notices.  And if I remember correctly back to the days of young kids in the house, it got messed up about 5 minutes after it was all cleaned anyway.

What matters is the time you spend with your kids, the life lessons learned, the love that is shared in that messy house.

When the kids grow up and look back, they'll never even know that the house wasn't perfect, they'll just remember the love.

So I now realize why I haven't gotten to those "dirty" places in my house in such a long time, I'm letting it go. I've learned a little lesson via the tooth fairy, a dirty house will always be waiting for you...the kids won't.

P.S. For my friends who think that this post is b.s. because my house is always clean, I'd invite you over to really look. It's not anymore. Sure, it's picked up, things are not piled on the counter....unless my sister is around, but it is not really clean. There is too much happening around here lately that I want to enjoy and take advantage of.

Care to share a lesson you've learned? I'm all ears.