For the love of mud

When I began to take my first tentative steps on the path to motherhood, I was extremely house proud. Like my own mum, I would clean the entire house every week without fail, it would be cleaned, polished, hoovered. It was part of my routine and I never thought it would change.

Ha! Little did I know.

Child number one came along and I quickly realised that it wouldn’t happen quite so thoroughly but I still tried to maintain some cleaning on a weekly basis and some had to wait a week or two.

By the time I reached number four, I have to be honest and admit that cleaning did not figure high on my list of priorities. There was never enough time and when I did clean, it would be messy again in minutes. I did what I could each week with a big blitz every now and then. I thought it would get easier as they got older.

Ha! Again, I laugh at my naivety.

The three youngest are 6, 10 and 11 and they are in and out of the house several times a day, going to school and different activities and apart from a general lack of time to be house proud, it certainly has not got easier.

If anything, it is worse.

Far worse.

Worse mainly due to the large amount of mud that seems to arrive with them, through the front door on a daily basis.

I have never seen anything like it.  My once light brown hall carpet is now mud coloured.  I really should get laminate flooring put down but then instead of spending my whole life hoovering, I would spend it sweeping and wiping.  Is that any better?

Rugby is a big culprit, they regularly bring back half the rugby pitch with them after games and training. They take their mud-covered boots off by the front door, but then there is the kit, particularly the socks, which are also laden with the stuff. But it’s not just rugby, there are football boots, wellies after forest school, trainers that they play outside in and, of course,  the mud that seems to magnetically attach itself to their everyday shoes.

My poor hoover should be renamed the ‘mud sucker upper’as that seems to be its new role in life. You know that horrible noise that the hoover makes when it sucks up the mud, well mine does that every time I use it.  The washing machine is brown for the first part of the cycle thanks to a large amount of mud inside it and after a rugby match, you would really have to see the state of the bath to believe it; white with a large helping of muddy brown, such a great colour.

I really never liked mud and now it is everywhere, in my carpets, on my walls and clinging to at least six pairs of boots and shoes (both boys have two pairs of football boots, a pair of rugby boots and ‘outdoor trainers’.

I want the kids to get out and about, so I am slowly learning to live with the mud everywhere and not panic too much. I am no longer house proud and if I’m honest, I think that my spare time should be spent doing the important stuff like enjoying time with my kids, rather than running around with a duster. The hoover, however, is still my best friend and without it, the house would be a very muddy place to live.