We live in a world where everyone is trying to live their best life, which means that we tend to share all of the good parts with our friends and family, especially on social media. We post the pictures of our kids when they are smiling and getting along. We post pictures about vacations and cookouts with friends. We talk about the latest and greatest thing we have tried or the food we've cooked. All the positive stuff, which is great. But what does this do to us mentally? It can be draining. We begin to compare our lives to others. We try to live up to other peoples' standards. We get frustrated when things don't go right. We begin to wonder why.
But guess what... it's time to embrace the mess and keep living your life.This is something that I am learning to do. Before kids, I was the person that always had my house together. The kitchen was always clean, the living room was always picked up. After kids (especially once the second one came around), I often felt a lot of anxiety when the house was a mess. I would get frustrated, sometimes at the kids. I didn't like that I was blaming the kids for feeling this way. Then I realized that the mess means they are playing and having fun. The dishes piled up in the sink and the laundry on the floor means that I am spending more time playing with them. I had to come to the realization that having a "messy" house was going to be the norm for years to come as the kids grow and instead of constantly living with the anxiety about the mess, I am learning to embrace it.
It's ok to come home and there be toys all over the floor, to have dishes piled in the sink, to have clothes that need to be washed or put away (let me be honest, I absolutely HATE putting clothes away so more often than not we just look through the piles of clean clothes to find something to wear every day). :-)
There is so much pressure on us to live this perfect life, but it doesn't have to be that way. When your friends post a perfect picture of their kids, just know it took them at least 10 tries to get that perfect shot. When you see those picture perfect clean kitchens on Pinterest or in magazines, just know that they probably don't even get used. Stop comparing yourself to others and be grateful for the life you live.
I am learning to love my messy, sometimes unorganized, crazy life and you should learn to love yours too.
A few tricks and tips:
- Create a cleaning schedule; I've used two options.
- Option 1 - assign a small task each night of the week. For example, Mondays - vacuum, Tuesdays - dust, Wednesday - bathrooms. I also did one load of laundry per night, as needed.
- Option 2 - pick one day of the week and set aside an hour to get through all of your cleaning. Stick to the one day so in your mind you know, Wednesday evenings is my cleaning night. With this option, I tend to do laundry all throughout the day on Saturday (one of my days off)
- Sometimes it is ok to not be organized
- My kids have a playroom where they have all of their toys. Each toy has a specific bin it goes in when we clean up, but some days (especially if the kids want to help) we just throw things in whatever bin we see and ta-da we can see the floor again!
- I also have that one room that if I know we are having guests come over I will throw all the odds and ends that I don't feel like putting away into the room just to get it out of sight.
- Ask for help!
- I tend to do most of the cleaning and laundry around the house because I am home so much right now with virtual learning, whereas my husband gets home later in the evening and his days off vary. However, I have learned that when things are getting backed up or if we are having people come over, all I have to do is ask him to do something he will always do it. (now if I could just get the kids to help out more) :-)
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