The Three Degress of Messiness

Being a SAHM with 3 under 6, I spend an awful lot of my time cleaning. Which has led to me thinking about messes. And here is my new philosophy.

There are three degrees of messes. The level of the mess is related to how necessary the mess is, and therefore how frustrating it is to have to spend time on it.

Category 1 - Human Messes
Some messes are necessary as a course of life. They are the messes that I would have to clean with any 5 people living here, even if they were all adults. They include things like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, etc. They still aren't fun to do, but not frustrating.

Category 2 - Kid Messes
These are the messes that the kids make just because they don't have much life experience yet. For example, clearing a cereal bowl sometimes ends up with milk on the floor because they don't know how important it is to keep the bowl level as they walk. The bathroom door knob frequently has to be cleaned because they wipe their grubby hands on it on the way to wash them. And even the section of dirty wall around 3-4 feet high falls into this category. It's actually kind of cute, now that I'm writing it down. The boys are so little, it doesn't occur to them that wiping dirty hands on the carpet doesn't get rid of the mess, and actually makes it harder to get rid of than just washing hands. I guess how frustrated I get by these messes depends on my mood & the carelessness of the mess maker (if I believe they should know better). If they are really stupid, they might even move into the next category...

Category 3 - Unnecessary messes
These are the most frustrating of all messes! These are the stupid messes that I should not have to deal with! They usually aren't malicious, but very unthinking. And in order to be in this category I think they have to be intentional, or very, very stupid. Ryan's hand prints on the mirror over the kitchen table (when he shouldn't have been climbing on the table in the first place). An entire drawer of clean clothes ending up in the dirty clothes hamper because they dumped them on the floor while searching for the clothes they wanted, then put them in the dirty clothes hamper instead of just putting them away (why would it be harder?). Or today, I got out of the shower to see my beautiful shiny fridge covered in sticky hand prints! I assumed it was Ryan just having fun making more hand prints, but it turns out David decided it would help him climb the fridge. What? Don't climb the fridge! And certainly don't put nasty hand prints (what did he put his hands in? I'm fairly certain he put something on his hands on purpose!) all over one of the few places in the house that is ready for my departure tomorrow!