And now, a short exposition on the hidden horrors in your home

According to Horrible Science Mag Issue 6, The Hidden Horrors in Your Home, (bedtime reading right now, lucky me), “the famous writer Erasmus was once a guest at someone’s house. He looked down and saw:

…a collection of spit, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beers, scraps of fish and other filthiness not to be named.

Suddenly, I feel much better about my house. Don’t you? I may be a crappy housekeeper, but the urine of dogs and men (well, male toddlers, anyway) gets mopped up immediately as does the vomit, and while I won’t guarantee the floor’s spit-free (I do have boys in the house after all), there are never scraps of fish on the floor. Score!

In the spirit of celebrating my low standards of housekeeping, I’d like to thank Beth Berry for last week’s post on Mothering.com, 10 Great Ways to Be An Unhappy Mom. #3 is:

Base your contentment on the state of your house. I like a tidy house. I feel more on top of my game, at ease and productive once it is relatively “clean.” But I would have gone insane (and taken everyone with me) if I held onto the idea that I could only be content once everything was “in its place.” Kids exist to dispel this notion. Likewise, feeling the need to apologize for the state of things upon welcoming unannounced visitors is like saying, “I’m sorry you have to see that we live in this house.” The notion that homes must look like display windows before they are presentable to guests is a crying shame in a culture so starved for community.

Absolutely. More importantly: compared to your medieval ancestors, no matter how pig-sty-ey your pig-sty might seem to you, it’s comparatively pristine. I say again–score!