Every other Friday, our home is visited by a magical person.

She is kind.

She brings her own vacuum.

She is non-judgmental, and even when I try to apologize for the state of [insert messiest room du jour here], she just smiles, “you have 4 boys!”

She is Ms. Laurie. She cleans our house, and we appreciate her work enormously for the 5 hours before the boys return home and effectively negate her efforts.

But before every other Friday, there is every other Thursday, when we get serious with the boys about their (theoretically nightly) pickup duties. Tonight was no exception.

How Sisyphean is this task, you wonder? Well, I’ll show you.

First, there is this: our eldest two — our supposedly most independent and helpful two — spontaneously hanging upside-down from the couch, only half dressed but of course wearing superhero masks, instead of picking up the (disastrous) living room as instructed 15 minutes prior.

Next, one of many handfuls of tchotchkes I retrieved from their bedrooms. The motivation [read: threat] is often “if you don’t pick it up, Mom gets to throw it away,” and the items like these — trinkets from Boo baskets, or party favors, or wherever else… are often abandoned and therefore go the way of Friday’s garbage pickup.

Finally, this. Just when you think the rooms are “good enough,” and you divert your attention to getting boys in pajamas or putting the baby down… a certain 3-year-old rips open a brand new bag of cereal and successfully uses it as a construction “dig site.”

But I’m telling you, those 5 truly clean hours on every other Friday… magic.

Related: a brilliant hack to *keep* your bathrooms clean for company // plus Sunday “get stuff done” day.