House(un)keeping

I'm a really terrible housekeeper. I like having a clean house, I just hate cleaning it. I like being organized and yet I've got clutter everywhere. I have 3 excuses:

1. Partially I shall blame the lack of closet space in my house. This house was built in late-19th century and people had waaaayyy less stuff than we have now, judging by both the lack of closets and the size of the existing closets. We even had a closet built before we first moved in and it's still not enough. It is a good reminder to strive to live more simply and to remind us to give.
2. I will also blame my parents (how convenient! I can't wait to see what my kids will blame me for) -- we always had a cleaning lady come in every other week and the running joke in our house was when my mom would tell me and my brother to "clean before the cleaning lady comes", which basically meant picking up our stuff. But that's all I was required to do as a child when it comes to housework. No scrubbing the toilets. No cleaning the bathroom, no mopping. I had to put my own dishes in the dishwasher. I don't mind picking up (and the good Lord knows I do it enough these days!!), but scrubbing and keeping things clean is really a chore for me (no pun intended).
3. Which brings me to my 3rd excuse: I have kids. Most days my goal is generally just to keep an overall tidiness to the house -- I feel like I can only do enough to get through the day (keeping the kids clean, keeping the dishes in a manageable state, picking up the toys) and don't have time or energy to do a really deep clean of things. By the time the kids are in bed at night (or during naps), I'm spent and the last thing I want to do is clean!!

It's good that we have family who comes in from out of town and stays with us. It's a great excuse for me to get off of my rear and start cleaning. I need that extra kick. I'd love to hire a cleaning lady but (a) we don't have the money for it and (b) I can't justify being a stay-at-home mom and hiring a cleaning lady.

I'm also excited for the day when my kids will start helping out around the house. Ben is pretty good about helping me clean if I ask him to help me pick up his toys. He also really likes to empty out the dishwasher, which ranks up there with annoying chores for me. I'm definitely going to indoctrinate them early and hopefully they won't have this same issue when they get older!

Basically, it boils down to me being an adult and responsible for cleaning my house and stop procrastinating & wasting time. It's like exercising -- I dread doing it, but once I'm done it feels so good (but don't ask me when the last time I intentionally exercised was)!