What a difference a decade and a half makes!

This morning, Mal wanted me to come sit with him while he woke up. I love to do that, but I'd already been up, walked, and made breakfast and I was ready to sit somewhere comfortable, which his bed is not (it's under a window, so there's nowhere to rest my back without the window pane cutting into my upper spine).

I asked if he'd sit on the couch with me instead, and he said it was too cold. So I got him a blanket, he covered up, and we snuggled for a bit.

After he was up and around a bit, I started to fold up the blanket to put it away. 

"I still need that! I'm a little chilly."

I suggested that he turn off the ceiling fan, which he did.

Now I'm going to interrupt this story to go back in time to the late aughts, then we will return to this morning.

When we were living in Sherman ("we" being D and me), we'd had a fellow homeschool family over for dinner. Their three kids and my one were alternately playing in D's room and hanging out with us adults. As their departure drew near, the dad went back to get his youngest, Rebekah, from D's room. Rebekah was on D's top bunk, which was very big and only about 2 feet from the ceiling.

Rebekah was talking to her dad over the side of the bunk and said, "Watch this!" She then proceeded to manually turn the fan, whose blades overlapped D's bed by several inches (we never turned the fan on when it was bedtime!). The dad started to reprimand her, then said, "Oh! Dust doesn't fall off of your fan blades." 

I didn't say anything, but the reason it didn't was that I dusted the fan blades every single week.

I dusted everything every single week.

Bookcases, end tables, the fireplace mantle, door frames, air conditioning vents, computers... I dusted once a week, every week.

Coming back to the present time, I have to confess that when I turned the fan off this morning, I was appalled by how much dust was on the blades! I cleaned it, and dust definitely DID sheet off of the blades. It was too much for the wipe to hold, and it all fell to the floor like giant dust-bunny snow.

Things have changed. 

At some point, I stopped my old cleaning routine where Monday was bathrooms/kitchen, Tuesday was dusting, Wednesday was vacuuming, Thursday was sweeping/mopping, and Friday was laundry and catch-up on anything else that needed to be done. 

At some point, I stopped having families over for dinner. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would *love* for my house to be super clean. I enjoy looking at old pictures and seeing how tidy and spotless everything looked. But I don't have the will or energy anymore.

I don't have a kid who wants to help Swiffer anymore, either!

Also, I remember from the time always feeling "behind" in house-cleaning, like I couldn't keep up. Once, I expressed this frustration to my ex-husband and he said, "The house is never clean, so why are you stressed about it right now?"

I guess maybe I decided to stop worrying about it so much and just sit down and play on the Switch sometimes. I still want my house to be very clean as much as I ever did. I just don't feel like it's possible so I don't strive as much. And consequently, my house gets dusty. If you're ever over and it bothers you, you are more than welcome to fix it!