Juggling Act

When I quit my job eight months ago, I had no Pollyanna ideas of how the stay-at-home-mom thing would be.  I knew it would be messy, exhausting, loud, and constant. There were whispers of doubt, of nervous anticipation that what if I didn't love it?  What if I didn't like it?  But I drowned them out with grand plans for how I would be spending my time and shaping my days.  Because with any change, if you listen too carefully to those fears, you risk not springing off of that diving board.  Or, worse, you take an akward, weak dive while you're still unsure, look up in panic and end up in a painful belly-flop.  And so I took a running start, and executed a smooth start head-first.

I still love being at home.   As I mentioned before,  I love the fact that I was able to be a working parent and that now I get to be home full time and see the differences.  I can see the culture of stay-at-home-moms (or, SAHMs, as they-I mean, we-refer to ourselves) from a step back, and I am grateful for the resources available to me that weren't available to SAHMs even five years ago.  I can bridge the gap between being around kids all day and away from other adults by texting and checking in on Facebook.  I can get a million and one ideas from Pinterest on how to create enriching environments for my kids- what to cook for them, what crafts to organize, what articles to read that will help me parent more intentionally. 

And you, you're reading this blog post.  Ta-da! Another potential portal for resources, unsolicited advice, and reports on how we spent out time today.  But today, being a part of your social media, I would like to be something different- a reality check.  Something that will no doubt make you feel better, whether your house includes kids or pets or houseguests or just you.  Here goes.

I am so weary of housework.  Today was Saturday and I took a load of stuff to Goodwill, did four loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, cleaned the basement and scrubbed one bathroom, picked up piles of cat poop where cat poop has no business being, made three meals for four people, cleaned up toys, swept, vacuumed, took stuff from the basement that didn't belong there back upstairs, took things that didn't belong upstairs back down to the basement, and wiped butts   I've read countless articles and quotes that talk about leaving the housework be, spend time with your kids- do the minimum necessary and it will really all be okay.  A clean house is not what matters.  And while I strongly agree with this idea, this is what happened today after I took one day off from doing any dishes:

One day, people.   (No doubt I complicate things by making almost every meal, which in the past two days alone included owl-themed cupcakes, granola bars from scratch and pumpkin bread.)  But still.  When you have no spoons or sippy cups left to use because you decided to play with the kids longer yesterday, you end up putting in twice the time the next day anyway.

This sounds a lot like complaining, and perhaps it is...we have been very blessed by a nice home, and I understand that to maintain said home with 4-6 people in it there will be a significant amount of scrubbing, soaking, laundering, carting and sorting.  But where I struggle is when to draw the line.  After a day mostly of cleaning while simultaneously playing with the kids, I felt angst about sitting down at 9pm to write a blog because this house sure doesn't look like I spent all day working on it.  And I'm riding the guilt train big-time for giving Oliver my repetitious answer of "No, I can't play right now,  I have to finish the [dishes/laundry/making dinner/whatever] first."  I'm trying to do less of that, and more of dropping the idea that I will only feel accomplished if the dishes get done in one attempt and not three.  After all, it's not about my convenience.  I'm staying home for my family, not for the house.

It's a juggling act, to be sure, and this house looks like a circus.  If the main floor is more or less clean, you can bet the upstairs is a deeee-saster.  We're working hard this month to purge and sort and re-organize, and that trip to Goodwill today was the third of its kind in the past couple of weeks.  But at the end of the day I look at piles and neglected areas and I just feel like we can't unearth. Not to mention that when one area is being cleaned, Charlie is usually going to town on another area, undoing some cupboard or dumping a purse. Today I found him trying to eat screwdrivers that I had safely put away in a newly-re-organized junk drawer.  The logical solution would be to clean when the kids are in bed, but this so happens to be the time of the day when I finally sit and can do nothing that requires more than the fine motor skills required of typing, holding a book or, let's be honest here, pressing buttons on a remote.

And so, press, press, click click, I have aired out yet another type of laundry today, hoping it finds solidarity with another poor tired soul who cannot possibly think of doing one more responsible thing today.  May peace find you tonight, my friend; go ahead and press that little red button that says "Netflix."  There will be more crumbs to sweep tomorrow.