motivation

Last night I was trying desperately to find the motivation to clean my house. We have these 3 day cycles between "clean" and "pigsty," and it was time to rework my way to the top of the cycle. It was a perfect time because James was at a meeting, the boys were asleep, (well, sort of. Jonathan was in hysterics because I had sent him to bed without a bottle, but he can't get out of his room, so he may as well have been asleep for practical purposes) and I just kept walking from room to room thinking, "wow, yeah. I should clean that." So, I did what I usually do when I am avoiding something, I Googled ways of doing it. It makes me feel that I am putting effort towards the goal (after all, how can you accomplish something if you are not fully educated on how to do it?), but really I am just playing on the computer. Sigh.
Anyway, in Googling "How do I get motivated to clean my house," I found three helpful ideas that I wanted to share with the rest of you, in case you are ever in my same quandry.
1) Always, and I mean always, burn down your house. The insurance company will buy you a new one.
2) If you cut every corner, it’s really not so bad. Everybody does it.
3)Hard work usually pays off in time, but laziness always pays off right now.
These three helped me the most. Then, there was this one girl, who I think totally missed the general direction of this housework motivator. She said the hard thing is getting past the first 5 minutes, so if you commit yourself to just 5 minutes, it will usually get you into a rhythm and you will find satisfaction in what you are accomplishing. My first thought, is "freaking jerk. She thinks I should clean!" But in the end, I did it, and gosh it was nice to have a clean house. At least until JonaWhirlwind wakes up. At least I'm still 2 days away from having to do it again.