"I see you've been cleaning."

All you prospective parents out there, consider yourself warned. It's not that mothers of busy little children don't clean, and hence, have dirty, cluttered houses. Quite to the contrary, we clean constantly. Toys on the floor, crumbs on the table, dishes in the sink, food across faces, stains on the clothes... don't even get me started on the diapers! And that's just the day-to-day (or more realistically, minute-to-minute) stuff.

But should one dare to attempt a more thorough cleaning project like, say, straightening a cupboard or scrubbing the bathtub, be prepared for your house to look ten times dirtier and more cluttered when you're done. Because according to Newton's Third Law of Childhood Behavior, for every organizational attempt on the parent's behalf, there will be an equal and opposite dis-organizational reaction on the child's behalf. (And be sure to multiply the disorganizational quotient by both the number of children in the home and the minutes they were left to their own devices for a true representation of the expected mess.) Because while you're tidying up, they are "entertaining" themselves. While you sanitize the bathroom, they dump the pieces of every puzzle in the middle of their bedroom floor for a puzzle piece stew. While you rub the jello stains out of your dining room rug, they play dress-up with the (used-to-be) folded basket of clothes at the end of your bed. Should you brave the living room dust bunnies, they will inevitably discover your secret stash of glitter, the permanent markers, and/or all of the toys you cleared out of their closet and slated for donation to the Salvation Army the last time they were gleefully distracted.

So, dear friends, the next time you arrive at a mother's home and her living room looks like mine, please, please withhold judgment. Simply take a large step over the blocks and side-step around the tupperware tower in the middle of the entryway, smile a kindly, knowing smile, and say, "I see you've been cleaning."

***photo submitted by Brittany