It was almost lunch time. I'd used Roomba while we were out running errands to vacuum up the debris of Cheerios, toast crumbs, spilled coffee grounds, and other random disgustingness that had accumulated on my kitchen floor. Now the stuff that couldn't be vacuumed up was revealed: the smears of jam and spilled hot chocolate and patches of baby food dotting the white tile floor like an abstract painting.

The chairs were all pulled out of the room. It would have been the perfect time to mop. Except that Evie needed to nurse and by the time I got done with that the older girls were going to be even more starving for lunch than they already were. How could I manage to do it all at once?

"Girls," I said in a carefully casual voice. "Would you like to use your new mops that you got for Christmas?"

Big round eyes, intakes of breath as though I'd just told them they could eat nothing but candy for the rest of the week.

"I'll get each of you a bowl of hot soapy water and you can use your mops in the kitchen!" I told them.

You see, my mother-in-law, obviously a brilliant woman, and one who has young children of her own at home, got Beth and Lucy each a child-size mop for Christmas. I hadn't let the girls "play" with them yet, but I quickly set them up with their cleaning tools in the kitchen, telling them "just try to get the sticky spots." I kept it as low-key as possible, as though it were a new fun game I was letting them play.

Then I sat in the rocking chair, put my feet up, and read a magazine while I nursed the baby.

When I came back out 15 minutes later, my kitchen was about half-an-inch deep in water, but almost all the gross spots were clean. Actually clean.

A few quick swishes with my full-size mop to get the stubborn spots, some "ice-skating" around the kitchen with towels on our feet to sop up the water, and I had a beautiful, clean, shiny kitchen floor.

It was awesome. I wonder how many times I can do this before they catch on that they're actually doing one of my least-favorite household chores for me?