Monday, January 7, 2013

Home Neat Home

Oh, who am I kidding? My home in anything but neat!

The other day I was reading the blog of a stay at home mother of six who had a house as spic 'n span as I've ever seen.  On another blog, a woman showed her crock pot sitting atop her otherwise completely empty counter top.  Each woman had an entire section of her blog devoted to tips on how to keep a neat and tidy home.  I read them and was enchanted by the neatness of it all, the utter organization, the lack of stacks of magazines and unopened mail on tables, the perfectly folded sets of sheets in the linen closet, the immaculate hardwood floors without a stray Cheerio in sight..........and I wondered, are these homes and these women for real?  My home doesn't look that nice EVER.  Okay, maybe the one day when my house was featured on the tour of homes for my neighborhood, it looked that clean and neat, but surely not since that lone day in August, 2006.

I'll admit that I've never been a super neat person.  I just wasn't born that way.  And yes, I think people are born either with a neat gene or without.  My older sister definitely has the neat gene.  Sharing a bedroom growing up was quite interesting given her need to have the hangers in the closet each exactly the same distance apart and my need to stack things on any available surface.  Talk about an epic battle.

There is a saying that a cluttered home is the sign of a cluttered mind.  I guess my mind is pretty cluttered because as you can clearly see from my counter top, I have a whole lot more than just a crock pot on it!


Why is there a Happi Tummi box in my kitchen?  I guess the box hasn't found it's way into the recycling bin yet.

We've been using the Happi Tummi to help Maren with her gassiness and amazingly, it works really well.  In case you've never heard of it looks like this:

You heat up the little herbal packet in the microwave, place it into the pouch, and then wrap the band around the baby with the heated packet on the stomach.  When Maren starts to get really fussy I use this and it seems to calm her right down.  I just wish I had a microwave in my bedroom so I could use it during the night without having to trek downstairs to heat it up!

Back to all things clutter.  I realized a long time ago that I will never be as neat and tidy as some women because the truth of the matter is, I just don't care enough about it to make the time and put in the effort to maintain that level of neatness.  Despite my clutter, I know where everything is and only have trouble finding things when someone moves something.  I don't lose my keys, my wallet or my phone and if you ask me where the field trip permission slip is I can say "second stack on the dining room table, right underneath the Real Simple magazine."  Yes, I see the irony there.  I will concede though that since adding our second, third and now fourth child, I feel the need for a little more organization.  After all, I'm not just keeping track of myself anymore and with Shannon and Quinn in school, there is a much greater influx of papers and just stuff into the home everyday.  My cleaning comes in spurts and one hit the other day, the end result being pounds and pounds and pounds of old magazines being dragged out to the recycling bin (by the ever great husband, not me.)


I have a hard time giving up magazines because I think about all the great ideas contained in them and I like to think that one day I will actually use those ideas or make all those great recipes.  It's a fantasy land that I believe I one day will occupy.  Every once in a while a moment of clarity hits and I realize nope, I most likely will never make all those recipes, and even if one day I have the time and energy to do so, I can find those recipes online.  Ahhh, you have to love the internet for giving us the ability to let go of so much paper and yet still have things right at our fingertips.

So, I made a little progress in my on-going battle with clutter.  Sully approved (ignore the crumbs in the corner.)



No comments: