The dreaded homestudy cleaning frenzy is getting to me. Nevermind that this is our fifth homestudy. Nevermind that I KNOW that social workers truly do not judge parental fitness on the cleanliness of your baseboards or the lack of hard water deposits in your shower stall. The social worker is coming on Friday and today I am cleaning. That’s all there is to it.
The four year old’s closet was pretty decent to start with, since I gave it an overhaul several weeks ago. But I’ve pulled the last four Rubbermaids of hand-me-downs out of it to make it obvious we really do have space for more children–or their clothes, anyway. We won’t be keeping any children in the closets. (grin) My 15 year old added a new shelf in the garage to store the extra clothes, and I am now admiring half a closet that is entirely empty. The shelves in the 8 & 9 year olds’ room are next.
We added that new sink in the laundry room last week, and I put up a nice new mirror yesterday. The kids took down their tents in the play room and vacuumed.
I walked around the house this afternoon, touch-up-painting corners and baseboards and the wall going up the stairs where hundreds of grubby fingers have rubbed.
I replaced the door knob that fell off the front closet on Easter Sunday.
I even put new numbers on the mailbox, since we’ve been missing one for….well…about three years.
Homestudies bring out the crazy in me, no doubt about it. But they also leave a nicer-looking house after the social worker gives us her seal of approval. And that is a very good thing.
Now, back to cleaning. (You may not hear much from me for a day or so…..)
I'm Mary, wife to John, and mom to 10 kids ages 3-20. Six of them were adopted, from Ethiopia and Korea. I spend my days applying Bandaids, reminding kids to use their inside voices, persuading kids fractions are useful, cooking spicy ethnic food, and snapping gig after gig of pictures. Very late at night, I write about it all.
Sounds an awful lot like nesting to me. And no wonder.
My unsolicited advice: D’ya know what I discovered earlier this year during an insanely stressful month? Cleaning services are amazingly affordable on an as-needed basis. For $40 I had 2 women cleaning my house for a solid hour. It’s beyond our budget to do that on a weekly or even monthly basis normally, but I was traveling 4-5 days per week that whole month, DH was writing his doctoral dissertation, and our 18 month old, our big hairy dog, and our cat refused to just pause long enough to let us catch up. It was the best money we spent that month and we had them in once per week. My sheets were changed, bathroom deep cleaned/scrubbed, floors vacuumed and mopped, everything was dusted, counters were wiped down, etc.
If I were in your shoes, much like you are willing to pay the extra to have the overnight delivery on important documents, I would totally call in some professionals on Thursday (or even early Friday) to catch everything up while I took the kids out for a nice afternoon. Give everyone a break and keep the little fingers off of the clean sinks that much longer.
Good luck and keep us posted. I can’t wait to hear how wow-ed the new homestudy group is by your awesome family and home!!
We did the same thing. For days I was scrubbing and wiping and dusting and washing while muttering “I want to see the blueprints, I want to see the blueprints, I want to see the blueprints…”
We may be joining you soon in the Ethiopian game plan. Possibly even with AAI as well.
Oh the joys of the paperchase again.
Jamie
hang in there!
SOOOOOOOOOOO very worth it in the end.
Heck- if you need to nest after Friday? I’ll buy you a ticket!
Really, how much fun can one girl have – touch up painting! Now you are the queen of the homestudy cleaning! I just took my Mr. Clean eraser around!
We were waiting to do the homestudy. Waiting until we did this or that to the house or finished that project. Then we realized that it was never going to be perfect and so we just took the plunge and did it. And lo & behold we were approved.
Maybe I need to have a homestudy done…..my walls could use a good scrub.
Way to go Mary! What a great feeling to have all of those little projects done.