No rest for the weary

This post has been ruminating in my mind for the last two weeks but I have not had a chance to put it into words. I am too busy running this household of six, which is what this is about- raising a family is a lot of work.
I  know this is not  exactly news but sometimes I just feel this reality more than others. The laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, dishes and the constant constant clean up. I clean up after my kids all day long and then when they go to bed at night I spend another hour or two cleaning up some more- putting away books, toys and clean laundry, washing dishes, sweeping floors, wiping down counters. And this past week I added on doing lots of  vomit and poop-laundry as a stomach bug hit Baby AY and some of the other kids.
The crazy thing is the more cleaning I do, the more I see needs to be done.  I am really just covering the basics, I have my running list of projects to get to "when I have time": clean random stuff off the bookcases, wipe off the walls and all those hard to get to corners, organize closets, clean the fridge, wipe down cabinets, etc. The list goes on and on. The funny thing is I actually have cleaning help but once a week really cannot hold us over for a whole week. Usually not more than a few hours actually, once the kids come home and wreak their havoc.
A home requires constant maintenance. I was discussing this aspect with a friend  recently. About the difficult of having spiritual aspirations when most of our life is so physical and really requires us to be hands on all the time. And the impermanence and repetitiveness of all the things we do. I remember once learning that it is all about "who you become in the process". Currently, the only thing I am becoming in the process is cranky and tired. This is something I will need to work out as I go along on this journey. For now I will just keep on cleaning- and possibly relaxing at the end of it all with a nice glass of bubbly wine.