This is what it always looks like in our family room.
Some defaced dolls:
An overflowing, upturned toy cupboard:
Other highlights from this weekend, courtesy of my three kids:
I went upstairs to make my bed after breakfast and found a hockey stick in my bed, and cookie crumbs. I asked my son what was going on and he told me that he took the stick up to watch tv, and then ate some cookies. In my bed.
I was packing the Boy’s backpack for soccer and realised the drawstring was missing from his shorts. After searching for it high and low, the string revealed itself in its new form – as a leash for a stuffed cow that my two daughters were “walking” up and down the street. The drawstring is now covered in dirt and frayed at both ends.
As much as I love and appreciate being at home most of the time, I’m finding the “drudgery” aspect very difficult to bear. No matter how many times I clean, vacuum and tidy, it’s messy and cluttered again in minutes. The chaos in my environment seeps into my psyche, and I feel stressed and upset.
I need serenity and order, but it seems a long way off. I miss the satisfaction of being at work and completing a task. A sense of accomplishment, being appreciated, finishing something and feeling good about the product. Here, nothing is ever completed; it’s just one long, unending clean-up.
I love that you don’t explain why Boy needed his hockey stick to watch tv…
And “walking the cow” – priceless!
How I feel your pain, Amreen. Your house looks like my house! I feel like I’m in constant clean up mode and it’s never clean. This weekend we’re hosting our annual holiday open house (with close to 100 people coming, half of them children!…we hire a babysitter for the basement, aka the Kidzone) and I can’t imagine how I’m going to have even a semi-clean home to welcome people into.
I always think about those lines from Erma Bombeck’s piece “If I had my life to live over” that goes something like: I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded. And, I would have eaten the popcorn in the “good” living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.”
When I think of things from the perspective of what really matters when I’m old and grey and looking back, the mess, the clutter and the worry is irrelevant (as much as it stresses us right now). What matters is how we spend our time and that we spend it with the people we care about.
And, further to that…my children make me crazy. They mess up the entire house and wreck most everything in sight. Sometimes I can maintain the perspective I noted above. The rest of the time, it makes me totally crazy and I have to sit down with a glass of wine and breathe. And watch something totally mindless on tv.
PS: I will pay someone who comes up with a cure for the drudgery of cleaning kid mess over and over and over… 🙂
Oh, Amreen, I hear you, I also struggle with the drudgery. For me the worst is laundry, you know for a fact that you are never EVER done the laundry – unless you are washing it while your entire family is naked, boy would the neighbors talk then! I too remember fondly those days where I could empty out my email inbox and clean off my desk before leaving work, leaving myself with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and completion. It’s not much help, but I totally understand, some days I think my life now seems like one never-ending day. It helps to know I’m not the only one feeling this way, thank you for being so honest.
Love this post! Made me smile. Thank you for that!
It’s been really cold here and mornings are so crazy. When I can get them something hot and yummy I feel like a champ! Batter Blaster has come to my rescue lately, the kids will eat pancakes any old time! THey’re organic and instant so good stuff there. And best of all NO MESS! Hooray!!
🙂