Motivation for cleaning the kitchen

Making smoothies and the boy's lunches in my newly cleaned off counter space is motivation enough to make me want to clean up every counter and flat space in my house! Seriously. It has been so nice being able to just chop fruit and veggies up or get everything out all at once to make their lunches without having to move stuff or take one or two things out at a time. Oh the little things in life.

I am finding the more I enjoy the fruits of my labor the more motivation I am getting to keep going. I have really struggled this last year especially with just not keeping up. I clean when absolutely needed and my house isn't filthy (it's way cluttered and overrun with paper and toys), but I do have a clean freak nature about certain things. I used to never go to bed with a dirty kitchen. It was not spotless, but I would NEVER leave dirty dishes in the sink. It grossed me out.

You see, I grew up in Southeast Texas where they have huge roaches. Those freak me out...and if I ever see one in my house I REALLY freak and start cleaning like a mad woman. But what I learned over the years was it isn't the big ones you have to worry about, those get in from time to time (especially if you live near a bunch of trees), it's the LITTLE ones you should worry about if you see them. Those are the babies, which means that they are living in your house somewhere. Yuck. I just shudder thinking about it. But seriously, that was my sole motivation for never leaving dirty dishes anywhere in my house. Nor eating anywhere except the kitchen and dining areas.

Over the years I have moved, and moved, and moved some more. So the areas we have moved to don't have those pesky little things around really. They have ants instead...like crazy infestations of them (thankfully not fire ants though like in Texas!). So, I still have motivation for keeping my kitchen clean and food confined to eating areas in the house. But my kids don't really get this crazy fear of mine. So trying to teach them why we only eat at the table has been interesting.

All of that to say I have some serious motivation to get back into my old habit of always cleaning the kitchen and wiping everything down at night before heading to bed. It truly doesn't take that much time. I just have to get out of my mindset of being exhausted at the mere sight of my kitchen counters or the kitchen table. The last few weeks I had already started making the boys pick their toys/papers up from the table each day and the week before I started this blog I had started cleaning the kitchen well every night.