Clean or spend time with my boys?

I'm not sure what has happened to my formatting and it is driving me crazy so just ignore that.

I have been trying to be more efficient in getting my chores done so I can spend more time with the boys and doing other essential things. It seems like an inner fight all the time though. Do I just spend the minimum time cleaning? Do I spend one day cleaning thouroughly and then the other days doing fun things with the boys and only clean up the surface things? Do I do one chore a day besides the daily things like cleaning dishes? Do I take one hour each day and do as much as I can? Probably, if I were a cleaner person to start with it wouldn't be such a struggle. I don't know though. Kids will make messes no matter how clean you are. You have to eat and have to have clean dishes to eat off of. There is only one of me....

Anyway, I have been thinking A LOT about this and trying to find solutions that fit me and our family lifestyle. I will never be a neat freak. I will never have a spotless house every day. But I can learn to be more organized and clean as I go along. And I can teach the boys to clean up after themselves so I don't have to do it all. Even as young as they are they can learn not to just drop their things on the floor for me to clean up.

So, I was reading this article I had to read in one of my college classes about efficiency and organization of time and energy. The concern is that when you introduce efficiency into your home, you end up giving up other important things. The author of the article, Dorothy Lee said, "We have built homes as if they were backgrounds to set off our imaginately selected furniture and our fabric, our artistic arrangements and color combinations, and particularly kitchen as if they were there to set off the wonderfully designed new household equipment, in which we can perform our time-saving operations most efficiently. Somehow we forget to build a home for a zestful, boisterous, untidy existence, full of the opportunity and invitaion to real talk and quarreling and anguish and absorbing spontaneous activities. Does my pale wall-to-wall carpeting encourage the tracking of autumn leaves as my children come home? Perhaps I have taken the precaution of building a special door, so that they can go directly to the rumpus room or their own rooms, leaving me to my efficient meal preparation and my living room intact, with its tomb-like perfection undisturbed. Does my kitchen invite a rush of noisy feet to find out what is cooking, to batter me with excited accounts of the day's happenings or even with offers of help? Or have I planned it so successfully, with such step-saving, muscle-bound efficiency, that it freezes out my husband and my children?"

She goes on to say that "we have become so engrossed with saving time and effort, we have emphasized efficiency so exclusively, that we have away along with the 'needless' labor, the bright thread of meaning....What exactly are you doing to my life? Will the labor 'saving'--that is eliminated--take the main way I had for relating to my daughter [or son] and intoducing me to her [or him] into the mysteries of a woman's [or man's] life? Will it take the joy of creating away from me? The bustle and rhythm of work that fills my home with life? Will my muscles grow flabby, so that I shall have to so sterile sitting-up exercises to take the place of my meaningful
work?"

It's a very confusing thing for me. On the one hand, I am often embarrassed when someone randomly shows up at my house and feel I should apologize for the mess. This past Sunday a friend came to our house after church unexpectedly just as we were walking in the door. I was
mortified. Sunday's are supposed to be a clean day but they are anything but clean at our house! It is all I can do to get us ready and to church on time, let alone keep our house clean before we get there. Is it more important for my children to see a clean house on a Sunday or to teach them that it's important to get to church on time? The argument can be made that Saturday is the day for cleaning so on Sunday it should all be done. We have church at 1:00. I'd like to see the mom that can keep her kids from dirtying the house by the time they leave for church.

It is virtually impossible to explain to a 20 month old that he can't walk on the floor while you are mopping. He doesn't understand and therefore, the result is a crying baby because of multiple slips and bonked heads. So is the solution to turn on a TV show to entertain them while I separate myself in the other room to mop?

Another example is when the boys want to cook with me. They feel very upset if I tell them no. We have a very small kitchen and not a ton of counter space. When they help there is no room for movement because they just have to have a chair to stand on and each just has to have his own chair. By the end of their "helping" there are eggs, or flour, or any number of ingredients spilled all over my kitchen. While they've had a great time and I've gotten to spend quality time with them, I am also then left with a huge mess to clean up that could have been avoided if I didn't let them help me. So what is the solution?

I just can't have it all. I feel it is important to have a clean house. I've said this before but if your house is dirty how can you have an envionment that invites the spirit? But I also can't figure out where to draw the line. How can I get over the feeling of embarrassment when someone comes to my house and sees that my bookshelves haven't been dusted for months and months (gasp!!!) or that my kitchen and dining room floors haven't been mopped in over a week?

Again, what is the solution? Any ideas for me?