How Clean Is Your House?

I have a dog.

As you know.

A dog, two kids, two cats, a husband. (Not listed in order of importance)

And every single one of us sheds and/or tracks dirt in the house. Our not-large house.

I don't know about you, but between work, homework, workouts and enjoying life, we don't have a lot of time - or interest - left over for housework.

The kids are generally helpful - when urged - and we try to keep up with the general clutter, the dishes & laundry and try to keep the floors reasonably clean, but maaaaannnnn. This house is not as clean as it was back before I started working out and had more time. Or as clean as it was when I had started working out, but before I added bootcamps, running and swimming to the mix.

And now that we've got the dog, it's full-time shedding and muddy pawprints around here. As well as the never-ending kid clutter, laundry and dishes.

An aside - did I tell you that we've burned out TWO vacuums since Stella joined us five months ago?

We made time this past weekend to catch up on the chores, which led to a lot of marvelling (or was it yelling?) over how untidy, cluttered and dusty things had gotten since our last deep clean, back in...um...I can't remember.

I'm not about to scale back on training in order to have a cleaner house. I'm also not prepared to reduce the number of pets (or people!) who live here. And as much as I'd love to hire a cleaning service, it's not going to happen.

So.

Obviously the solution is for us to do a bit more, and perhaps for me to care about the state of things bit less.

But I have to wonder - how clean is YOUR house? How do you balance training with managing your home?

Here's this week's recap -

Yes, that is a birthday doughnut. Her pick. We're having cake tomorrow.

Saturday - Happy Birthday to my daughter! 2K walk to buy treats for dessert.

Sunday - Ran C25K week 4 run 3, then had the extended family over to celebrate the birthday girl. Hence this week's cleaning frenzy. Walked kids and cousins and dogs down to the dog park later in the day (2K).

Boy and dog ran sprints up these stairs a few times. This is about 20% of the full staircase.

Monday - Family Day holiday and a day off! Took the kids and the dog to High Park - we walked the trails, checked out the zoo (bison and emus and llamas, oh my!), hit the climbers and took Stella to the forested dog park. All in all, about a 2.5K walk.

Tuesday - C25K Week 5, Run 1: run 5 mins, walk 3, run 5, walk 3, run 5. Was very worried about this over the weekend but it ended up to be OK. Phew. Now I can worry about W5 R2 and R3...

Wednesday - Had a flat tire after work but happily was able to get it fixed in time to hit the gym. Curves workout + bootcamp (100 squats, 30 lunges w/8lb weights, 210 arm reps w/ 8lb weights, 400 assorted crunches, 2 mins speed skating, 1 min skipping, 35second side planks, 35sec standard plank).

Thursday - 2K dog park walk, then Zumba #5 for the year + Curves circuit + bootcamp #16 (50 squats, 30 lunges w/10lb weights, 430 crunches, 2 mins speed skating, 35s side planks, 50 pushups).

Friday - Quite a day. My daughter got hurt at school and needed a few stitches - but under a general anesthetic, so we spent many, many hours at the hospital getting her taken care of. Happily, she will be absolutely fine. And the hospital took excellent care of her.  This is a week for me to be particularly grateful for the kindness of teachers, doctors, nurses, tow truck drivers and mechanics.