The Green, Green Grass

On my vacation at my sister and brother in law's house, I've been thinking a lot about life without children. My sister and BIL always have some degree of shock when hanging out with kids. This time, in their house, on their fall break, kids seem especially alien to them. Though I have to say...
...their house is spotless. Everything is tidy, and there are no scuffs on the paint, piles of crap on the desks, toys jammed in closets, or massive piles of laundry.
...their garage is spotless. There are no flat soccer balls, outgrown motorized ride-ons, soccer goals, bicycles, or a decade of marriage's worth of old junk.
...there would never be anything to argue about. I forget about life BC, that it is possible to have individual identities that come together to form your marriage. Life doesn't have to be kid-centric.
...they have a whole hell of a lot of free time. Damn, I'm jealous.
...did I mention the free time? Working out, small gardening projects, reading books, cooking huge meals, watching Dancing With the Stars (fine, I would never do that last one, but still), puttering around.
...they live in near silence. I can't believe, when my kids are at the park here, or out with grandma, how quiet a house is. No dog, no responsibilities at all, and the house is totally still. I can hear the keys on the keyboard instead of straining to hear myself think.
...everything is where they put it. Keys? Have a home. Refrigerator? Nobody rifles through it looking for one last Capri Sun. Closets? Drawers? All the clothes still inside. Where they're supposed to be.
...when you turn on the TV, it is not this morning's episode of Oswald screaming at you. I really like that.
And while everything in their house is not new or perfect or exactly how I am sure they want it, it is clean, and tidy, and belongs only to them. It is not shared with fingerprints on all the windows, greasy smudges on all the faucet handles, cookie crumbs under the table.
It's certainly a different life. Would I trade back to life BC? Probably for a month. Just to remember what it's like to wake up when I want to.