Every time I asked parents before being one myself, "How do you do it?" in regard to keeping their houses clean and working and all of that, I'd get the response, "You lower your standards." I always said in reply, "My standards are already pretty low!"
It turns out that I am capable of much lower standards than I thought, specifically regarding cleanliness. Our kitchen, in particular, becomes a wreck regularly and I can't recall the last time I dusted anything. I have vacuumed lately, but it's still not nearly as often as I expected I'd do it.
We used to keep up with the cleaning, or at least keep up with it "well enough" because we'd have visitors regularly and I would always use that as the impetus to clean up. When I commented on the state of our kitchen to Andy the other day he said, "We need to have guests over." I said, "Um, we've been having guests over. It hasn't helped." Andy said, "We must be having the wrong kind of guests over."
I listed the guests we've had in the past month - my parents, Andy's parents, childless friends, friends with children, and an overnight guest. None of them were the kind that I cleaned up for and I'm not sure what other kind there is. If I don't clean up more for either of our parents, I think it's a sign that I'm not going to clean up.
Unless, maybe, somebody offers me a million dollars to come to my house and find it clean. Or maybe a clan of 10 overnight guests all carrying large musical instruments because there's no way they'd fit very far past the front door.
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