I have found this to be so true for myself, in so many ways, but perhaps most evidently in terms of cleaning.

By “cleaning,” I mean normal household duties — dishes, laundry, sweeping, tidying. I do not come by cleaning naturally. I’m not as embarrassed as I should be to admit that, in my not-so-younger days, I was content to stack the built-up dirty dishes into a pile and put off washing them a bit longer, convinced they looked neat enough.

I read an article in the September 2007 issue of “Baby Talk” magazine that made a case against having a super-tidy house. If a mom doesn’t spend so much time cleaning, the article reasoned, she has (1) more time — to spend with her kids and to spend on herself, (2) smarter children, as clutter may stimulate mental development, and (3) healthier kids, as extra-clean houses may lead to health problems like asthma and allergies. “Aha!” I’d thought at the time. “I’m a good mom BECAUSE I don’t clean!”

But I’ve found that my messy habits don’t really fly when you have kids. And the more kids you have, the more you really need to have your act together. At least, this is my experience: Waiting too long to do the laundry means nobody has anything to wear, all at the same time … disaster!

Waiting too long to do the dishes, no matter how neatly stacked, means you have to scramble to wash enough dishes for dinner, just when the baby’s screaming and everyone else (including you!) is starving … disaster! Waiting too long to sweep the floors means you’re mortified when visitors arrive unexpectedly, especially when they have children with them who’d like to crawl on the floor … disaster!

I’ve been working on being cleaner for a good four years now, ever since Thomas was born, and I’ve seen real results! And my very favorite result has been a recent one: I’ve been able to give baby John a bath in the kitchen sink!

This might sound weird, but I’ve always wanted to give my babies baths in the kitchen sink, and

I’ve never been able to because I was always behind on the dishes. I used to see pictures of my friends bathing their babies in their clean, no-piled-up-dishes kitchen sinks and envy them. But just a couple weeks ago, when I saw my clean, empty sink, I decided to try out the sink-bath thing, to see if it was really as great as I’d imagined.

I felt like Ma Ingalls as I filled the sink with a little with warm water, and poured in some Baby Magic, swishing the soapy water until it was bubbly. I laid a folded towel in the bottom of the sink, rolled one end to use as a pillow under John’s head, and let a little of the water go down the drain until the towel was just barely covered. I put John on the towel and poured little cupfuls of water over him while the breeze fluttered the sunshiney curtains on the window above the sink and carried in the sounds of summer. John kicked and smiled and cooed, and when he was clean I wrapped him in a towel and parted his dark hair with a baby brush and thought, as I’ve thought before, that there are very few things as wonderful as the smell of a clean baby.

Niecy Nash, the host of the Style Network’s “Clean House” show, recently admonished one of the owners of a cluttered home, telling her she needed to take a “big girl pill” and take her responsibilities as an adult — including maintaining a tidy home — seriously. I feel like being a mom has helped me to take a “big girl pill” and have the kind of home that I want for my family.

But don’t worry — I’m still realistic. I know that our house isn’t going to meet any kind of “Better Homes and Gardens” standards while I have little ones running around, but at least I’m no longer embarrassed to have unexpected visitors. Most of the time.

Kate Towne Sherwin is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) living in Saratoga Springs with her husband, Steve, and sons Thomas (almost 4), Gabriel (2), and John Dominic (2 months). She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it