Cleanliness Is Next to...Impossible!

Aw, man!  I don't know what I did, but I was just doing a post and it disappeared.  I was typing, there was a flash, and then it was all gone.  I swear I could hear the computer sniggering.  Does anyone else's computer hate them?

Anyway, I want to know how everyone stays organized.  I HATE being organized.  That is, I hate having to organize everything.  But I hate not being organized even more.  Why can't I get up in the morning and say to myself, "Yay!  Laundry time!  Woo hoo!  And it's a good thing I stayed up late to do the dishes so I have a nice, shiny kitchen too!  And I just can't wait to go out and feed the chickens, and grind wheat, and make bread, and clean my son's room, vacuum, dust, clean the fridge, the oven, all the various dog, cat, and toddler messes that are bound to accumulate today, find all the dirty socks that are bound to be stuffed in various sundry places...and clean it all!  Yippee!  I LOVE my life!"

Why can't I be like that?  I know some people must be because they always have sparkling beautiful houses and I don't see any other way to achieve that.  Do they somehow bend everyone in the house to their will?  Do their toddlers miraculously NOT make messes everywhere they can think of and some places they can't, and do their husbands miraculously NOT leave dirty socks lying around (I'll admit, they are mostly confined to his office these days, and as far as I am concerned that is mostly his business)?

I suppose it would help if I had a dishwasher, because then dirty dishes wouldn't accumulate on the counter to be washed twice a day.  Or if we didn't have four dogs, two females, two males--none of them fixed and the females simultaneously in heat for the last month (talk about nightmare!).  Or if we didn't have chickens that had to be cared for, and eggs that accumulated that had to be boiled, pickled and canned, because there are so many that I simply can't think of anything else to do with them, or if I just bought bread instead of hand-grinding my own wheat (yes, really, by hand.  I don't just push a button and an electric machine does it for me), and baking my own bread.  I used to bake it by hand, but there simply weren't enough hours in the day, so now I use a bread machine.  The only problem with that is that there is only one recipe that works at this high altitute and low humidity, and, paradoxically, it uses a LOT of yeast.  Plus, my other recipe is so much tastier.  But who has an EXTRA three hours in a day twice a week to bake bread?

Still and all, I think that if I were really determined enough I could still have a clean house.  I still find time to read sometimes.  I ground myself from reading once in a while, because if I let myself I could totally fill my days with books, and as much as I love them, for a mother that is mostly a waste of time.  Don't get me wrong; I want my kids to read like demons, but I'm not a 12-year-old in the summertime anymore, when I could just hide out under my covers all day and read, read, read.

I've tried making lists, but mostly they just depress me, because I can never get through more than half of it in a day, no matter how hard I try, and at the end of the day I always wish I had done the things on my list I didn't do instead of the ones I did.  I'm sure I could prioritize better.  Like now.  It's 8:16 A.M. and I have been up for about four hours, and haven't really done any chores yet.  I had to get up early to take my husband to school so he could carpool to his clinicals, and at 5:00 when we were ready to go I had to get my poor son up out of bed too.  He didn't mind.  He never minds things much.  Except his toilet-training potty, but maybe I'll get to that another time.  By 7:30 he was lying draped across my lap with his eyes half-closed, and even though it was very early I figured he probably needed a nap.  So, he is now napping.  And I should be cleaning.  But instead I'm blogging.  I justify it in my mind, saying when he's sleeping is my computer time, and I won't take his whole nap up on the computer anyway, but...I'm still here.

So, if any of you with spotless houses (come on, Shawntae, admit it--and a paint spill doesn't count as a "spot") have any ideas on what I could do to get mine more that way, I would REALLY appreciate some pointers.  I do NOT want my kids growing up in a messy house.  I'm not going to perpetuate that.  The buck stops here!  But...I'm not exactly sure how to go about it.

It's not that my house is in a constant tip, because it's not.  It's just kind of on the edge of not-quite-clean-enough.  The kitchen gets that way daily, but it gets cleaned up daily, too.  Well, almost.  And that's a hard one because we only have two working drawers and one cupboard door in the whole kitchen.  The rest is all open, sagging, and falling apart.  We will have to totally redo our kitchen one day, but unfortunately that is not in the cards right now.  Realistically it will probably be another two or three years before we can do it.  Not much I can do about the kitchen.  But the house is always dusty.  I'm trying to be better about that.  Notice "trying" means I'm not actually being better about it.  I ought to vacuum every day, because even when I do the dirt holder completely fills up each vacuum.  Did I mention that I live in the middle of many square miles of dirt?  No concrete jungle here.  But I don't vacuum every day because first I have to pick up the extraneous clutter here and there, and then, oh, yeah, there's the dryer timer.  Time to fold laundry!  Except it always sits in the basket for two or three days waiting to be folded because something else invariably comes up right at that moment.

Then, in the middle of everything, my son will wake up from his nap, and then I have to try and find time to be with him.  Because he's the most important part of my whole life, when my husband isn't home.  When he is, they are both the most important parts of my whole life.  Somewhere in there, though, I still really, REALLY want to have a nice, clean, presentable house where I'd never be embarrassed if someone came over unannounced.

So, what's the verdict, everyone?  Do you think it's possible?  Should I hold out hope, or just throw in the towel?  Oy, and I only have one kid!  What happens when number 2 is born?