This is the way we sweep the floor....

Summer is a hectic time at our household with all the stuff we try to cram into the nice weather days.  We try to follow grandchildren in their summer activities.  We shoot Cowboy Fast Draw, and the summer is the season for the titled matches and town folk alley events.  We grow a garden, although that has been an exercise in frustration this summer.  And we try to take a few camping trips and enjoy some family reunions.  With all this activity, something has to give…and at our house it’s the house!

I was once told that when life gets busy and housework has to suffer, that your priorities need to be laundry and dishes…because those things tend to pile up and increase in size over time, plus life gets complicated when you can’t find clean dishes to eat on or clean clothes to wear.  So I really try to keep up on laundry and dishes, but sometimes not much else gets done. 

Lately, we have begun to wear shoes, slippers or flip flops around the house because if you don’t you find yourself doing the “dirty foot dance”.  You know, it’s when you are wiping the bottom of your foot off on the other pants leg because there is sand (and who knows what else) on your foot and it feels gross! 

We don’t have carpeting in our house anymore and have gone completely to hard floors (except the guest bedroom which is awaiting renovation and the loss of its carpet).  I have heard and been a part of discussions of carpet vs. hard floors and can see the pros and cons of each.  Carpet feels soft under foot, and generally tends to look cleaner as the dirt and dust fall down into it.  Hard floors clean up easier but always seem to have a layer of crumbs and sand on them, especially in the Sandhills where sand is everywhere. 

This morning I woke up early and decided it was time to put an end to the “dirty floor” dance routine through the living room/dining room area.  Mike was sleeping and seems to resent me cleaning the bedroom while he is asleep!  So I got out my broom and swept up what amounted to a pretty good addition to a sandbox, complete with food crumbs and dust bunnies. 

Next I got out my Swiffer dry dust pads and went over it to get up the fine dust etc.  Here is the pad when I was done with it:

Dry mopping #1...UGH!!!

It seemed really dirty still, so I repeated the previous process.  Better but still kind of dirty.

Then, I see there were drips and smudges, probably with a big thanks to two dogs, that needed to be scrubbed up, so I got out a Swiffer wet pad and went over the entire floor once again, this time hoping that it would feel clean.  Here is the result on the wet pad:

So, is my floor now clean?  I didn’t try to scrub it a second time because I had already gone over it 4 times and was out of time to do any more cleaning, but I have to wonder. 

So, carpet or hard floors?  I am convinced that hard floors are the answer at our house.  What with the dogs and eating in the dining room and tracking sand and infrequent vacuuming, I think that hard floors will clean up better for us. I believe this discussion can be put in the same class as the “over or under” toilet paper discussion…whatever works for you! 

Now that I have bared my soul about the filthiness in my house, please don’t judge me.  I do the best I can…and most importantly, we are happy there!