Five years ago my husband and I arrived home to the flashing lights of a police car.
Slices of hazy red and blue light sliced and retreated over the the front of our pale-peach 1920’s rental as we unbuckled our two small children from their car seats, and a stern-faced officer approached to escort us inside.
We were a little shaken. We’d never been broken into before, and when we got the call that evening we’d rushed home, uncertain what lay in wait for us at home.
When we walked in the front door, the house was in chaos.
The officer walked us through each room one by one, notebook in hand.
In the craft room paperwork spilled over the counter with no rhyme or reason.
The kids’ playroom was a wreck–toys, art supplies, books, and dress ups covering the floor, the little table and desk. Nothing in order.
In our bedroom the drawers were open at odd angle, their contents riffled through and hanging over the drawer edges. Clothes were thrown haphazardly across the floor and the dresser top was awash with discarded jewelry and clothing.
“Anything missing from here?” the officer asked, holding up his pen. “Anything out of place?”
“No,” I said.
“No?” he asked. “Nothing out of place? You mean… It looks like this all the time?”
Yep. It did.
It looked like that ALL THE TIME.
Someone had broken in through the back door of our house, disturbed almost nothing, and my house–my house as we lived in it EVERY DAY–looked to a seasoned police officer as if it had been totally ransacked by a criminal.
How’s that for shattering the Insta-worthy blogger mystique?
I was, to say the least, discouraged, uncomfortable, and humiliated.
Take Heart, Mama!
Five years later, my house doesn’t look like a crime scene anymore. But it doesn’t look like a magazine, either.
Or even like the home of someone who has a reasonably good cleaning routine. (Probably because I don’t have one of those!)
Parts of it (the company-coming rooms like the living and dining rooms) I can get usually looking cheerful and welcoming at short notice. But other parts (the garage, the kids’ playroom, my master bedroom and closet…) frequently descend into a mild-to-medium level of crazy that takes an hour or two to really sort out.
And there is a sort of constant over-stuffed feeling that I’m always battling with–trying to keep our possessions from overtaking us again.
Basically, mama, I’m a work in progress. So I want to give you two pieces of hope to hold onto if all or part of your house feels crime-scene worthy, and you feel in over your head.
Bad Housekeepers Can Still be Good Moms
A lot of times we stay-at-home-mamas lump all our roles in together into that very title.
“Stay-at-Home-Mom” feels like one role: the woman who holds it all together. The woman who reads the fairy tales and schedules the doctor appointments, makes the dinner and kisses the owies, cleans the bathroom and helps with the math problems.
But guess what?
That’s not one role. That’s a LOT of roles.
And that means you can be struggling in one role (like “Housekeeper”) but still be rocking it in another role (like “Mom”!).
So let’s start by shaking off the guilt that our poor housekeeping skills are a sign of a “bad mom.”
In fact, can we just take the word “bad” out of the housekeeping equation altogether?
“Bad” implies a kind of morality that I think just isn’t applicable to how we behave around a ceiling-high stack of dirty dishes.
“Intimidated,” sure. “Overwhelmed,” definitely. Maybe even “avoidant.” But I sincerely doubt that any of us take in an overflowing sink and think, “I’m not going to do those dishes because I want to cause suffering.”
Because, if we did, I mean… That would probably be considered morally (or ethically?) “bad.”
But being so paralyzed by the hugeness of the mess you don’t know where to start? Or so exhausted that you can’t summon the energy to wipe off the baby’s highchair?
That’s not bad, mama.
That’s human.
Messy House Shame
I come from a long line of fastidiously, impressively tidy women.
Their houses sparkle. Their windows don’t have finger smudges. They might even take the time to clean the grout between their kitchen tile with bleach and an old toothbrush. They are truly incredible when it comes to keeping a house spic-and-span, and I’m not sure what happened, but that gene skipped right over me.
For a long time I felt ashamed and embarrassed of my messy house–not because of how it looked, but because of what I thought it said about me.
The perpetual piles of washed-but-unfolded clothes. The overflowing toy bins and bookshelves. The sinkful of “soaking” dishes and stacks of half-read magazines. The sticky floor covered in toys, Cheerios, and dried pasta sauce that fell off a kid’s spoon sometime in the last month or three. They all felt like big, glaring, Las Vegas neon, screaming for everyone to hear:
JAMIE’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
JAMIE IS FAILING!
COME WATCH HER FALL APART!
You’re Not the Only One
Slowly, slowly, slowly I’ve found solace in other mamas:
Mamas who invited me over even when their homes were a mess. Mamas who confessed that they still hadn’t figured out how to keep on top of a cleaning schedule or felt physically buried by the mountain of dirty clothes in their laundry rooms. Mamas who came into my home, as it was, and focused their love and attention on me.
So mama, if you’re still figuring out the clean house thing, know that you’re in good company.
You’re part of a little army of us messy house mamas, all trying to get better and wishing the progress was faster. (Real progress usually isn’t.)
You’re not bad.
You’re just learning.
And I’m right there with you. ♥
xo,
Jamie
p.s. Want to start making progress? This book has been helping me a ton!
