Homemaker highway to heaven or hell: your choice

I can do it at work, but can I do it at home?  I had a breakthrough today. In the middle of a deadline day I took 2 hours to clean up my mess: home, laundry, bills.  I have a 3 floor place and it's just me to take care of it, on the side of mothering and grad school.  As my hero J.K. Rowling once said in reply to how she managed to be a single mum and write a book:  "Well, I didn't do housework for four years. I'm not superwoman.  Living in squalor, that was the answer!". And it has been my answer too.  But squalor can be a subjective thing and I have just decided to redefine mine. Normally, everything at home piles up (including late bills) until one 5 hour stint of house wars puts it mildly back in order -- about once every months.  The problem is, my stress increases exponentially with the mess I try to function in at home. Also, not keeping any systems going means I can't force my kids to help because what to do is always changing:

"Mum, where is a clean towel?"
"Can't you find one yourself?  It's in the dryer--hall closet--upstairs bathroom--downstairs bathroom--hanging in my closet--or on your bedroom door!"

So today, while on a short break from numbing my brain to the ins and outs of building a mouse model that recapitulates human kinetics of disease progression from myelodysplastic syndrome (del5q) to acute myeloid leukemia, I decided to clean my highway to hell.  That would be the path that leads from my basement door/laundry room up to the main floor kitchen/entrance way/guest bathroom and again upstairs to our second bathroom (which happens to be the most used areas of the house).  As I had been wallowing in self-pity rather than homemaking of late, I also needed to throw in a fridge clean out, basic laundry and bills (including a mother effing parking ticket summons).  Here was the genius part, when I just decided to do what I could quickly in the worst areas, I managed to restore almost all of our household's basic needs in 2 hours.

• kitchen tidy (well from third world to post-frat party) with fridge clean out
• basic sanitize: 2 bathrooms
• laundry collection and one load through for tomorrow
• vacuum of worst areas
• beds made
• garbage out
• bills paid

I feel like a fucking genius -- or at least Rosie the Riveter.  From now on I'm going to tie my hair up in a polka dot handkerchief and keep my highway to hell on a short leash, kids and all.