making muffins… on the floor!
Did you know you can make muffins on the floor? Me neither. It never even crossed my mind before until we had a play date at my good friend Jbomb’s yesterday. She let’s her kid cook on the floor all the time! How does she do it? She mops every single day. Her floor is spotless! Her whole house is spotless for that matter.
A lot of you commented that you’d love to do crafts or make cookies with your toddlers but you just couldn’t handle the mess. I totally understand. I think it all comes down to what your comfort level with dirt/clutter/chaos is.
It may be a blessing in disguise that I grew up in a pretty messy household. (think: Clean House) I don’t love dirt and grime and shooing the cat off the table right before dinner but it doesn’t make me wither and lose my appetite either. Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who washed their hands a thousand times a day. I’d probably get sick less often. But then again I don’t think I’d like having to put stinky lotion on my dry chapped hands because I washed every last molecule of natural moisture off my skin either.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a happy medium somewhere and my happy medium might be way over yonder from where your happy medium is. Different strokes for different folks and all that… It won’t hurt my feelings if you toss the plate of cookies I brought over into the trash five minutes after I leave your house because you spied a cat hair on them. I understand.
Sigh.
However! I didn’t mean to take up this whole post getting on my soap box about dirt. It’s really about having a fun time with my friend Jbomb and her little boy Max. Where there is a will, there is a way! And making muffins on the floor is pretty fun if you’re two and handle a mixing spoon like Mix-master Max!
I thought my friend’s way of handling toddler messiness was pretty creative. The kids loved it and mixed to their hearts content. Baby Bug even did rather well spooning the batter into the little paper cups. There was actually very little mess to clean up and it kept them occupied long enough for Jbomb and I to get into several deep discussions about mopping. She still hasn’t won me over though.
I’d much rather blog than mop the floors.
40 Comments
josephine
so is everybody grossed out now? sorry.
Sarah
psh, I agree with ya there, I would much rather blog than do a lot of things.
Jummy
I’m not grossed out! And is it wrong that I trust my “dirt” more than others’? Like I’d pick something off my floors and eat it because I know what’s been there but maybe not at someone else’s house, just because I don’t know what they’re like.
It really does come down to what works for you, and your definition of clean and messy.
(I am a handwashing and hand cream lovin’ person though).
PS – Baby Bug is concentrating pretty hard on that muffin! I think she’s trying to get it to tell her the secrets of life!
Jummy
Me again: Max is adorable! Love those cheeks!
Becca
Ah, when I grow up I want to be as good at cleaning my house as your friend Jbomb. Somethings just aren’t meant to be. In the meantime, I’ll be happy with the fact that our dog will clean up whatever gets spilled or thrown on the kitchen floor.
Melissa
I have a very sweet memory of making chocolate chip cookies on the floor when I was about 4 years old and really hope to be the kind of mom that will bake muffins and cookies on the floor with my children! Mopped or not!
ginger
I do not have a spotless house. Heck, most of the time, it’s on that level just below “clean.” But I do let the Doodle help cook from the floor. Sometimes, when the project is really messy, we spread an old vinyl tablecloth on the kitchen floor. (You can pick some small ones up at, like, Big Lots, for about $1 apiece.)
The Chatty Housewife
Mmmm, muffins.
She Likes Purple
I grew up with a father who designated every Sunday “cleaning day” and for years and years, I hated Sundays because of it. If I chose to be lazy on any given Sunday, as an adult, I couldn’t shake the guilt. But, now, I think life is too short, love is too important, memories are too invaluable to spend much time making sure things look fantastic. But that’s just me, and, sure, a lot of times I think that’s just what I tell myself to not feel so badly about NEVER MOPPING. Not once. Not ever. (Mike does occasionally.) But, really, you’re better off eating off the toilet than the floors (toilets get cleaned far more often around our abode).
Rosie@parentingissues
It certainly wouldn’t be advisable to make muffins on my kitchen floor!! I do try to keep a clean and tidyish house but there seem to be more important things in life than spending the whole day cleaning. Being a parent is exhausting enough!
Robyn
My happy medium is somewhere around where yours is, I think. I don’t own a mop either. No, wait, I do – but it’s still in the packing I bought it in about a year ago. So there ya go. I am way too busy blogging to mop.
range
Our place is sometimes so messy that my wife comments that it looks like two guys live here.
She doesn’t clean everyday either, neither do I.
OMSH
I would much rather pay someone to mop my floors while I blog.
Of course that means sometimes I have to work and not blog – which sorta bites, but oh well…
bethany actually
Back before I had Annalie, when my cousin was on bedrest during a pregnancy, I helped her out for a while with her oldest son, who was then four years old. Almost every day that I was there, we made muffins or play-dough or something, and we did it all sitting on the floor and using a wooden stepstool as the table. That wooden stepstool was a lot easier to swipe with an antibacterial wipe than the floor was to mop.
My own method for baking with Annalie usually consists of letting her sit on the counter, which might gross some people out. But I am not very paranoid about dirt, either.
knitterykate
Nope. Not grossed out. If you only knew how often I mopped my floor! Only when it grosses out my son so much that he lets me know and then maybe not then~I don’t take orders from my kids.
Heidi use to call muffins “muff-cakes”.
Kristin
sing it, sister!!!
cleaning sucks. always has, always will.
i’d much rather play with the kiddies, watch tv, or go on-line. :)
Amy
I’m so with you. A little dust and dirt never hurt anyone ;-)
you can just wash your hands with water and it gets the germs off just as good. I used to be a preschool teacher and can personally vouch for it :-)
Laurie
YUM.
And I can totally can hear Niecy Nash now!
familymclean
me too…..about blogging over mopping. And a lot of other things….like photo shopping out dirt, yup, it is quicker than mopping.
DeeJay
Blog more.
Mop less.
…I’m just sayin’….
barnmouse
Mopping. Ugh. There’s only one word worse than that, and it’s ironing. Yuck. We’re having house guests this weekend and so I’ve mopped twice in two days, but before that? Meh. Unless someone’s coming over, forget it. After our guests leave, the floor will go back to being covered with cat hair. Little cat hair tumbleweeds rolling around our wild west kitchens. Classy, huh?
erin rae
See… all I can think when I see the floor baking and her beautiful floors is… there is no way she has pets! In our house, the dog hair is never ending. We have cleaners come in once a month, so for about 2-3 days afterwards, everything looks wonderful.
I ~wish~ I was naturally driven to clean so my floors always looked like hers! Countertops I am rather obsessive about, but other things, not so much. I’m trying to get better, but I can always think of 800 other things I’d rather be doing.
If you want to send me some cookies, I’ll eat them!
Missgirlbliss
I would rather blog than clean any day. (Which there is no excuse for in my case cuz my little one aint even here yet!) I just hate cleaning in general. I only mop my floors when I absolutely have to.
Mrs K
ok i’m confused- that’s not you right? no that’s Jbomb…and no i would never cook on my floor – my stepmom used to mop every night…i tried it for 2 days a few years back and was exhausted. Anyways what about steptools man? no good?
jd
To those who hate to mop, may I have the pleasure of introducing you to the wonder that is the Bissel Steam Mop? No soap needed (just steam). Dries almost instantly. The wipey pad gets filthy and makes you feel virtuous, then you just drop it in the laundry. Oh lordy, I love my steam mop with the same intensity that I hated mopping previously. Probably the best 80 bucks I ever spent.
Buy an extra set of pads though, since mopping large floors usually means swapping out a disgusto pad halfway through. Also, the pads go on better if you wet them down first so they’re a bit stretchy.
All Adither
In a week? I’d say I haven’t mopped in, oh…two months? Ick.
Kaili
Such a great idea! Baking on the floor.
That little Max dude is CUTE!
janet
I’m not grossed out! A little cat hair and dirt never killed anyone I know.
beck
I’m totally about the blogging and not about the mopping. My first thought when reading this was: I bed JBomb doesn’t have three long-haired pets, two of which are German Shedders (as I do.)
SmockLady
:)
Susan
We love dirt at my house. Its much better than being so dang up tight with your babies and not enjoying them while they are little. There won’t be many moments spent in the floor making muffins and whatever else.
Anonymous
The best reason to have teen-agers….they can mop the floor. My kitchen is tiny, so I have found the magic eraser sponge. It’s the only thing that cleans in the crevases of vinyl tiling. My girlfriend told me that she knows the kids don’t do as well as she would, but she just has them do it more often.
Alas, for a tidy house, but the knitting needles keep calling my name….and the DVR.
bluejaye
Who knows why the site doesn’t know me anymore. The previous is from me.
Kim
And yet one more reason to add to the 4 million of why I love you!!!! I agree entirely. I’d rather spend the time running around the house playing with her than shooing her away so I can clean. Just so she can come behind me and dump her sippy cup all over the exact piece of floor I just cleaned. Just seems to kind of defeat the purpose sometimes :)
justJENN
I don’t know about the floor, but I have a week’s worth of muffin posts, what a coincidence!!
Kuky
Hee hee, “If you can photoshop it out then it doesn’t exist” love that. I rarely ever ever mop. I have a pretty high tolerance for clutter and dirt but I should swiffy vacuum my laminate floors everyday because we have ant problems. Isabelle likes to carry her food around and drops crumbs everywhere. If I’m not on top of the swiffying the ants come out.
Beth
play more
blog more
craft more
LIVE more
clean only when truely needed!
i am only saying….
anj
toddler-made muffins are the most scrumptious!
toni
no matter how clean my floors are, i don’t think i can make muffins on them!
Nila
Germs do a body good. I think I read somewhere that kids are healthier when they’re exposed to some germs and a lot of childhood allergies are because of the super clean, antibacterial environments they grow up in. I keep telling myself that and it makes it easy to ignore the dirty, dog hair covered floors. My kids are rarely ill.