The Messmakers

Our house isn’t spotless, much to my mother’s constant dismay. It isn’t dirty, like with food tucked under couches and stacks of junk everywhere but we have the mess that comes along with being busy. Folded laundry on the couch that stays a few days longer than it should. Clean pans on the stove that were left out to dry that are still there three days later. The island in our kitchen – while I would LOOOOVE for it to be spotless every day – isn’t ever spotless. Right now it is covered in mail, silly bandz, Carson’s report cards from school, Carson’s toothbrush (THAT’S where that is! I was just looking for that upstairs!), a couple of USB cords, a pair of shorts I need Carson to try on before I can decide keep or return, and a barrette of Mallory’s.

Then there are the bedrooms upstairs. My walk-in closet is a mess, especially right now. I pulled EVERYTHING off the shelves yesterday, planning to put it all back together, but of course I ran out of time and so it’s all still a mess. The kids’ bedrooms each have a laundry basket of clothes that need to get put away, plus a huge storage bag or two full of clothes that don’t fit anymore and need to get passed on to whomever.

And then there is our basement. Our basement playroom is a disaster – since I send the kids down there to play while I try to get dinner done or do some photography stuff, and I justify not cleaning it by saying that it’s only going to be a mess again in three days so really what’s the point? I usually sing a song for Mallory to the tune of Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match! – “Messmakers messmakers, make me a mess!” and now Mallory will tell me that the messmakers have made a mess wherever in the house. Cool, huh?

Just found this picture Mallory took with her camera back in December…and it got worse than this, before it got better.

Instead, I like blogging (this is honestly the best baby book and scrapbook EVER for my kids). I like playing with my kids. I don’t dislike cleaning, it just seems that when I get done with everyday stuff, and get the kids to bed, it’s my bedtime too, and it’s another day that I didn’t find a block of time to do a big clean. Rick & I keep talking about implementing a cleaning schedule but since he’s hardly home, I thought I would get the short end of that deal (and have to do a majority of the cleaning) so I rebel.

I got this sign last fall – and it sort of sums up my thoughts on cleaning my house…

The best is a couple of months ago I was frustrated having to pick up Mallory’s toys in the living room for like the 500 time that day and said something to Mallory like “UGH! I don’t like cleaning up your toys all the time!”. I heard Rick whisper something to Mallory and then Mallory said “Sorry mommy – I am just making memories.”

PS – You can get your own custom sign – with this saying or whatever you want, from here. I also got the “Dear Santa…I can explain” one for Christmas ;-)

Anyway – last night we had a date night and of course I thought “ugh – we should just stay home and maybe since we are both home we might be able to do something with our disaster of a house” but we did go out and we had a fun time.

And then we got home and our babysitter (one of Mallory’s teachers from daycare) said she tidied up in the basement and folded some clothes in Mallory’s room.

Um yeah. She didn’t “tidy up” our basement.

It’s spotless. Every.single.toy is put away. This happened last August when we had a sitter too and not to discount that babysitter’s efforts, but this basement was like 1,000,000 times worse than August.

I guess I don’t remember ever cleaning up so much when I used to babysit. Oh, maybe because I probably didn’t.

So, the point of this post is so that when my kids grow up and I try to give them grief about their houses being messy, they can remind me that their house growing up wasn’t spotless and they turned out OK. Hopefully.