If the earth were a mother, she would understand.

Why is my house so dirty? Because I grew up in a clean home! The floors were always swept, the clothes were always put away, there were never any piles of dirty dishes in the sink.... my mom did a great job, but never taught me. Now, I am trying to maintain my home and I have realized how much of a cleaning impairment I really have. Since we don't have a cleaning lady - and since my mother is halfway across the world from me - I am learning how to keep our apartment clean while taking care of my three little puffballs. What's my secret? Cutting corners!

I'm sure there is a landfill somewhere with my name on it.. there is a layer of diapers from my three little puffballs and another layer filled with the various plastic plates, cups and utensils that our household goes through. If the earth were a mother, she would understand. The most important thing is to love my children and nurture them and she wouldn't be so bothered by how many disposable plates, pans and utensils we go through.

I truly dislike doing dishes and am awful at it. So I decided that the best way to minimize my kitchen mess is to use disposables. It took me a little while to arrive at this conclusion and more than a few conversations with my husband along these lines...

(him) "I need a fork, where are all the forks?"

(me) "They're in the sink, pick one up and wash it off"

(him) "I can't see a fork, the sink is filled with dishes"

(me) "Sorry, I need to do dishes"

(him) "Are you going to do them now?"

(me) "No, I'm feeding he baby"

(him) "So, how am I supposed to eat without a fork?"

The answer was simple. I can buy two bags of 100 plastic forks for 10nis ($2.70 usd)... which saves me from having the above conversation the next 200 times it would normally occur.

Also, I never have to clean up shattered glasses or shards of broken china from my floor. Plastic plates barely make noise when they're banged on a table by a playful toddler and plastic cutlery is less likely to cause an injury than the real thing.

The simple truth is that I don't have so much 'cleaning time' in my life right now. Furthermore, I have more important cleaning tasks... like mopping the floors on a regular basis, since we know that toddlers have an '86,400-second-rule'.. a food item remains edible a full day after it has been dropped on the floor. There are other priority tasks, so dish-washing is the place where my shortcuts are taken. Your weakest cleaning task may be something else and it's up to you to find a way to conquer that area quickly and easily.

There's nothing wrong with shortcuts. There are some things that are essential to running a household. Obviously, you can't raise kids if they have nothing to eat or nothing to wear or if you plunk a big pot of soup in the middle of the table and hand everyone a spoon.... but if I had to choose between an hour at the park and an hour doing dishes with restless kids underfoot, then I would choose the park. In an ideal world, someone else would do my dishes and I wouldn't be feeding the landfills with my garbage. I'm sorry if this offends any of my ecologically-inclined friends, but this is my solution and it's a solution I will continue to advocate to any of my harried-mother friends.

Don't worry, I won't be inviting Al Gore over for Shabbos lunch anytime soon.