Domestic Zero, Vindicated

The apple most certainly does not fall far from the tree in our house. Or really, in this case, it's the dust bunny from the vacuum.

My son could be the next swiffer spokesperson with the way he maneuvers that thing through our house. And he brings our large pink Dyson to my attention at least four times a day. In fact, on special days, I've been known to actually use it just to appease him.

See how good a mother I am?

It usually takes my husband a good five minutes upon arriving home before he's out and around our house with some sort of odd cleaning ensemble which generally involves an old sock or pair of underpants (for slightly bigger jobs - my husband's ass is about the size of an edamame pod) and a spray bottle. And then he traipses through the house cleaning random things in the most haphazard of ways.

Basically, he will never clean one entire room. I'll walk into a bathroom with a clean sink and toilet, but a tub full of bath toys and old wash cloths. Or he'll tackle one entire half of our bedroom while the other remains completely untouched.

But, truth be told, he is cleaning, so let him spend two hours cleaning strategically around his highly organized piles of clothes everywhere. It's better than me having to do it.

So, thanks to my husband's obligatory cleaning frenzies that occur at least two times a day, my son has now taken a liking to all things that clean, including but not limited to brooms, dustpans, swiffer mops, spray bottles of dangerous chemicals, the gigantic vacuum cleaner, and the dustbuster.

Of course, it wouldn't be so bad if he could actually clean. Granted, he does pretty damn well with a diaper wipe on a window. And since we have no window treatments on any of our windows, the streaks work pretty well for privacy. But the only thing he's done with a dustbuster is scrape up my floor and move dried cheese from under the chair to under the table in a fairly unorderly fashion. In fact, I'm not sure how he does it, but he seems to have mastered the art of using the dustbuster as a leaf blower. Except it's crumbs and raisins.

In my house. All over my floor.

And since my husband seems to be able to vacuum while letting Drew hold the handle, it's just not good enough that I decide to run the vacuum myself. Even my patent pending pregnant vacuum song and dance number doesn't cut it.

And don't forget the stupid comments from the in-laws. I mean better when you've got a kid obsessed with G-clefs, but a boy and his vacuum? Hello idiotic statements that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, like "Maybe he'll be a janitor when he grows up!"

[No offense to the janitors in the audience]. 

But after thinking about this for awhile, and carrying around dry swiffer dusters in my diaper bag (you think I'm kidding), I realized that my husband is never really home. So maybe my son is eating the apples falling off my tree.

I guess that explains why he can sniff out brownies in a matter of seconds. And why he's so freaking cute.

Comments

[Adam]

My mom use to have my brother and I clean the house during the summer. One or two jobs a day. I used to be annoyed by it but now, as an adult, I appreciate the experience because I learned how to take care of my things. I am surprised by how many people I know who don't know how to take care of their things.

Adam

http://adam-finch.eachday.com

[jaelithe]

I got my son a kid-sized broom at Target, AND a kid-sized toy vacuum that looks just like a grown-up vacuum and even has a tiny bit of suction. (I actually bought him the vacuum not because he loved vacuums, but because he was terrified of them. I thought it might help him get over the terror. It did, actually. He used to play with the toy vacuum a lot. Now he won't leave me along while I'm vacuuming and keeps trying to "help" me, or play chicken with the vacuum as I push it. Fun times.)

[musicmom325]

Haha. This made me laugh. I guess it could be worse. He could love to play with toothpaste. Which my 2 year old has discovered one day when I accidentally left it out in the bathroom. That was a fun mess to clean up. She goes in there every once in a while to see if it's still there.

[b]

I have 14 nephews and all of them loved vacuums until they were old enough to have to use them for a chore. I truly think it's like a loud truck and as one of my nephews said, "I like the clickity it makes when it picks up a broken pretzel."

[Lady M]

He's soooo cute!

Q-ster was fascinating with brooms and vacuums too. When he was two, our Christmas card featured him holding a broom and mop because we couldn't get him to let go of them while we were with the photographer.

[cendrine]

sounds familiar ....

[Shannon]

This sounds like a boy looking for meaningful work. My kids were/are that way, and washing windows and sweeping are some of their favorite pass times. I give them a spray bottle with water, a towel and a squeegee and let them loose on the windows. It's amazing how long they will soak the floor before abandoning the task, and if I don't mind the top half of the sliding door being significantly dirtier than the bottom, everyone wins. (Ooooh, and we spent one snow storm with a bucket of water and scrub brushes on the kitchen floor.) BTW I am a confirmed domestic disaster in the housekeeping department, no neat freaks here.

[Carmen]

My mother-in-law made a comment once about how my son was going to grow up to be a serial killer. So really, janitor seems much less worrying. (She defended her comment by saying she was just trying to think of something the complete opposite of my husband and I - both PhD's and doing cancer/Salmonella research. I'd probably have used janitor rather than serial killer, but heck - that's just me!)

My 2 year old son also loves to "clean". I ended up cutting the handle of a broom off so that he now has one his size (I was sick of stuff getting knocked off tables during the enthusiastic sweeping fits.) He also runs around with the vacuum cleaner wand from our central vacuum system. I'm not holding out hope that he'll still enjoy it when he's older though.

[submommy]

Our boy children are quite similar, it seems. Loves the Casabella Microfiber broom.

And our husband's asses sound like they are about the same size. It's maddening.

[carolyn]

My son LOVED the vacuum when he was little. He actually got (a little kid)one from my MIL for Christmas when he was 4. Now he is almost 13, plays several musical instruments, and cleans absolutely nothing, including his body, unless I make him. So, things change, nothing to worry about.

[Katie]

My mother, trying to get me to clean, bought me this duster thing on a stick. It looks like someone hacked off the tail of large yellow fox and stuck it on a broomstick.

At any rate, I never used it. Until NOW. My 17 month old son is completely and totally in love with it and dusts (spreads shit around) all over the house.

[House frau]

My kids actually fight over the swiffer sweeper and will argue over the siffer wet jet too. We used to have the pink Dyson until my son, when he was 2, pulled a piece off and broke it. We were unable to fix it and ended up with the purple Dyson animal, which I love. And I let my kids take turns using the $500 vacuum cleaner, because it keeps them occupied!

[Asianmommy]

My kids love to vacuum, too. They fight over it. But by the time they're old enough to actually use it effectively, I'm sure they will have lost interest!

[maddye]

My three and four year old get ecstatic at the thought of getting to use the vacuum. It's the prize in our house...."if you eat all your dinner, maybe I'll let you vacuum".

[Catherine]

My son is 19 months old and LOVES to play with brooms and mops. He has the best time pushing a full sized broom around the room/porch/garage and it's HILARIOUS. I went to visit my in-laws a few weeks ago (which is a miracle in itself since my husband's in Iraq and I didn't HAVE to tell them we were in town) and my son was out on their screened in porch pushing the broom around. My ever-so-tactful uncle-in-law saw what he was doing and said, "So, do you think he's a little...." and then made the limp wrist motion, implying that my 19-MONTH-OLD BABY is going to be GAY because he likes to sweep. My head almost exploded. Don't get me wrong, I love gay people (my sister is in a same-sex marriage) but that was waaayyy over the line. Sorry for the long post, just had to share my own in-law/cleaning story!

[Becky]

I'm glad your son got the brownie sniffing genes - crucial! :)
Becky
http://www.stinkylemsky.typepad.com/

[Christina]

Will your son please come give a lecture with demonstration to my two children? They look at me like I'm insane when I suggest we clean up the toys on the floor, as if that is the most ridiculous idea they've ever heard of.

[Undomestic Diva]

My two year old is obsessed with our vacuum, which, outweighs him by like 40 pounds. But no worries, he drags the damn thing out six times a day, in an effort I think, to encourage me to clean... Yeah.

Finally, I gave up and let him do his vacuuming (you know, the whole two ft square section he insists on)... two hours later my neighbor stopped by with some cookies and peeked in to see my two year old struggling to get his vacuuming done. I just smiled and said, "It's not child labor if he likes it, right??" I haven't seen her since.

[Amy]

Well, it was supposed to cleverly cross out "shoplift" down there, but I suck at HTML. Oh well. Imagine a horizontal line. YKWIM?

[Amy]

There must be a toy vacuum in the world that you can shoplift buy somewhere.

Here's a baby Dyson at Amazon:

http://tinyurl.com/66q5kl

I think it's well past time for you to tell your inlaws to get bent.

Amy @ http://prettybabies.blogspot.com

[Vicki]

First commenter...YAY!! I just wanted to say I'm the cleaning nazi in my house. I can't stand clutter and my hubby fusses cause I keep trying to throw away half his junk, uummm, I mean stuff.

I carry weird stuff in my diaper bag too. My kids will play with everything but a toy when all I want them to play with IS the toy.

My boys try to ride the vacuum cleaner instead of use it. They think its a quicker way to get across the room than to actually crawl/walk their way over there.

I won't let my hubby touch the laundry. I have to fold it my way or it makes me crazy. I know...OCD - they have meds for that but I just can't help it.