From Top to Bottom and back again

Cleaning my house is an all day every day chore. I am constantly cleaning, straightening, dusting, vacuuming, wiping pee off the floor, doing laundry, putting toys away and by the time I finish...its a mess again. At this point Im sure you are imagining that I live in a grand home or that I have OCD. You would only be correct on the second part. I HATE clutter and messes and with 2 kids and a dog..thats exactly what you get. I rarely have time to clean the entire house, so I clean as I go. And as I mentioned before, by the time I get to the last room...the first room is dirty again. Bread crumbs from the toaster, dog hair on the floor, baby spit up on the toys, pee on the toilet seat and floor, sticky finger marks on the table...it never ends. At this point, there is so much pledge and lacquer on my dining table that I am convinced it will go up in flames if I light so much as a candle near it. I know people say, "spend less time cleaning and more time playing" but I'm wondering what these people's homes must look like. Dishes piled in the sink? Dirty laundry spilling out of the baskets? Floors filled with crumbs and pieces of food? I've had dinner in a home like this before and it was so disgusting, that I sat paralyzed on a chair unable to help out with the meal as I would typically offer. When my son announced that he needed to poop, as he often does in new places..I panicked. I wondered if I would be able to sanitize the toilet seat with the Purell in my purse. And briefly wondered if anyone would think it strange if I ran him home for a quick shower before dinner. Needless to say, after my meal glued to the chair, we made a hasty exit. Upon arriving home we turned the hose on our son. No, not really, but we showered and bathed him until his skin had moved well beyond the pruney stage and into that soggy, bloated stage.
We used to have a cleaning lady, who would dust every pane on our shutters. She was a dream in that way. In other ways...not so much. After the birth of my first child, when I was headed back to work part time, she told me in her thick polish accent "I dont like...no good for baby".  Little did she realize that my staying home was the end of her paycheck. Once I quit, my husband...a man tight with a dollar, announced that I was our new cleaning lady. And boy do I take my job seriously. Sure I dont get paid, but some day when my children tell me that I ruined their childhood by spending so much time cleaning..I will look into their freshly cleaned faces, glancing at their stain free clothes, standing on a gleaming kitchen floor and that will be payment enough. Until I get their therapy bills...