Temporary surrender

My house looks like a cyclone hit it. Of course I'm exaggerating, but it just seems like every single room is touched by the 'mess monster'. Bathroom? Wet, no make that saturated bathmat, thanks to a midday bath which was necessary to clean off my little adorable snowgirls. Again. When will I learn to keep the stinkin' door latched? Apparently not today. So where were we - ah yes, the hallway has wet footprints alternating with floured ones.The lounge room? toys and clothes, random assorted clutter on every single horizontal and stationary surface. Kitchen? Don't even go there. I know that some of it is just normal, everyday stuff - and I can usually cope with that. But today, for some reason, I can't. We've finally slowed down, after 2 very busy months, and I'm trying to re-establish some sort of routine around here, and I'm finding it difficult to know where to start. I feel paralysed. I need some sort of cleaning/organisational genius, like Peter Walsh, to help me. I look around at the clutter, and it just seems so impossible, that I can't even begin. And I want to, but I don't, as if that even makes any kind of sense. And don't feel as though you have to throw a solution my way, although if you do I'd be grateful. I'm really just wanting someone out there in the void to say "I've been there. I get it. It will get better."

 

Part of the challenge is that this still doesn't feel like it's my home. I feel as though I'm living in someone else's house. It's probably just from years of living in rentals. I don't feel settled in this house. It sort of feels like mine, in that I helped to choose the tile, and the carpet, but it doesn't feel like mine because I've not had the opportunity to set up my own system of housekeeping.

I never used to be all that concerned with tidiness. I used to be a clutterbug. I think if I've changed at all from meeting my husband, it's that I've become a bit of a neatfreak. Or I desire to be. I'm still a clutterbug, but it bugs the snot out of me. It makes me tired, angry, and depressed. I remember when I was a little girl, my mom would get so frustrated at the state of my room. She would let it go so far, and then she would enter with a giant black trash bag. And just throw stuff away. And now, as I sit here with the clutter, I understand that state of mind. I don't want to live in a museum-like state, where people come in and they are afraid to touch or breathe on anything. Am I insane to think that a tidy house and small children are mutually exclusive?  

 

Where does the line fall in that equation?

Where do small children and family life fall into a clean and organised home?

Where does a clean and organised home fall into family life?

 

Waving the white flag from under a pile of stuff,

Sarah