My mother and my suegra disapprove, sometimes out loud.  This does little to motivate me. I visit friends’ homes and feel slightly embarrassed when I think of my own house.  I take note but I don’t take notes. I could allow Rambo to hire a housekeeper. I could keep a calendar, make a chore chart, or set up reminders on my phone.

We’re not headed for an intervention on Hoarders. We team up to take care of the basics. We make an extra effort for visitors and parties. But I never hesitate to postpone housework. In my mother’s house, chores were a weekly Saturday routine. The majority of the day was spent on vacuuming, cleaning floors, dusting, doing laundry. In our house, exercise and outings are the usual Saturday plan. There’s a dicho in Spanish, “Como es la mujer, asi es la casa.” Why should I, as a mother and a woman, be defined by how clean my house is? I  have so much more to offer my daughter.