One of my husband’s favorite cleaning tools is a shovel. Yes, you read that correctly.  If the basement gets too messy, he shovels all of their toys into a pile.  This is not my favorite method since I long for the children to put their stuff away correctly, not just in a random box.  This process is more challenging when there is a huge pile of stuff.

Thankfully our house has been more organized lately.  (Except for my desk and paperwork, but that is a WHOLE other story!)  Our kids are getting old enough that they are beginning to get the concept of cleaning up.  By themselves even.  Evidently we have put enough toys in time-out that they get that we mean business.  Most of the time anyway.

Even with all of the improvement, I am convinced that our house will never be clean all over at the same time again.  I think our place is just large enough to make that difficult.  We can achieve picked up and almost tidy.  But white glove test clean is an impossible dream.  By the time one floor is vacuumed and scrubbed, the next one is no longer that way.  Add nooks and crannies to the list, and we are done for.  Maybe this is why some people like to hang this plaque on the wall …

Cleaning your house while children are growing

Is like shoveling while its still snowing.

Every year I read through the Bible – since I am almost always done with each section in less than 10 minutes, this is really not all that impressive.  (Speed readers of the world unite!)  Anyway, I have a new appreciation for the book of Kings that I just finished.  (I started Chronicles which begins with genealogies – that is a bit harder to enjoy!  I digress … )

Basically the whole book of Kings is about different rulers and their exploits with the exploits of several prophets included.  Many of the kings were horribly wicked.  Their sons would sometimes see that evil and actually turn back to God.  Almost.  The kings that followed God faithfully almost always forgot to do one important thing.

1 Kings 15:14