Cleaning with toddlers in the house

I hate cleaning! I know, no one really likes to clean house. But every week I set aside a good 6-8 hours just for deep cleaning and every week I have to go through this entire mental exercise to convince myself that it won't be so bad. I remember a time when I didn't feel this bothered with housework. Hmm, let me think was it pre-children?? Could it be the fact that it takes me (now with two toddlers in the house) double the amount of time and sometimes even 3x the amount of time to clean as it did before I had children? And once I finally get the house clean, I spend what's left of my day picking up after them. By gosh, that could be it! Oh the days when I felt a sense of pride after cleaning the house and enjoyed the peace of a clean house for at least 3-5 days. Now I'm lucky if I can keep my house clean for 2 hours.

Let me give you a recent example of some futile cleaning. On Sunday, I spent about 20 minutes cleaning the walls that lead down to our basement, where we have the kids playroom. I was tired of looking at filthy, dingy walls covered with hand prints and scuff marks so I got a wet rag and proceeded to scrub the walls as my kiddos watched TV. When I finally got to the bottom of the stairs (and feeling pretty good about my job I might add) I look up to see my 2 year old boy banging and running his little car all over my freshly cleaned walls. So I say to my little sweetheart, What are you doing??? And all he does is look at me and smile. Okay so he's too cute to be mad at but I do think to myself, why do I bother? When it comes to house cleaning, I can't wait to be done with graduate school, get back to work part-time and pass on the deep cleaning to someone else.