My daughters were on spring break last week. Now that they’re adult-types, I’m not involved with their breaks and vacations, besides the fact that I wonder why they haven’t left the house all day. After I burst into one or the other’s bedroom telling them they’d be late for school and them informing me it was spring break, I wondered what was in it for me.

The fact of the matter is, because they are adult(ish), the house doesn’t get nearly as messy as when they were little. I remember after my oldest got to the phase of actually playing with toys, I thought I was the crème de la crème of domesticity. I couldn’t understand why other mothers stressed so much over keeping their houses picked up. I mean, really, just pick up the toys after the kid goes to bed and it’s tidy for the next day.

The deal was, I had one child, and I don’t even know if she was walking yet. By the time her sister came around, when I attempted to cajole her into helping me pick up, she told me we didn’t need to, “we could just step over stuff.” That is the insight into the state of my home by then. I had shrunk into my own hole of clutter-despair.

For some reason, now that my husband is retired and home all day, I have somehow been blessed with more time and have even, you should sit down for this, vacuumed and dusted all by myself, twice. But because I am normally averse to cleaning on my own, I sat down to contemplate what I should have my daughters help me with on their spring break. One should always choose those tasks which one abhors.

I asked my youngest to sweep and mop the kitchen floor, because no one should be able to identify meals from a month ago on their linoleum. And my oldest had to clean the bird cage, which she normally does, and the hall bathroom. Quite honestly, I know my youngest cleaned the floor because it was beautiful when I cooked the next meal and that my oldest cleaned the bird cage, because the bird was appropriately angry at the destruction of all her hard work messing it up. I have no idea if the bathroom was cleaned because I don’t use it.

I know it wasn’t much for them to manage, and the mother in me felt I should have come up with more. However, it was their break and I like to respect their time off from their jobs, so to speak. They visited friends, played video games late into the night, and got ready for their weekend at Sakura-con.

Though I feel like I have a lot more time these days, I am using much of it by helping my mom with her house. It’s all-consuming reorganizing another person’s space. Plus my husband and I were getting ready to take off for our first week of car events/camping.

The first trip out in the RV always takes extra time because I pack the staples for the whole summer. Unlike the weeks I just throw in random fresh food and clothes and off we go. Everything is always planned out, but with the staples already packed, there’s less to forget the rest of the season.

So you can see my mind is occupied elsewhere. I haven’t the time to consider what my daughters are or are not doing. There is still a part of me that feels I dropped the ball on an opportunity for extra help. Or threw it up in the air to see where it landed, as long as someone picked it up.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.