A mess!

I cannot stand when my house is out of order, when I can't find things, or when my bare feet get dirt on them when walking in my house. These things make me crazy!!! I can't stand spots on my cabinets, dishes in the sink, or finger prints on my cabinet handles. I spend a lot of my days picking up toys, vacuming daily, wiping stuff off and so on. I don't like to clean but it's way better than having a mess.

However, I have a 1 and a 4 year old boy. They love playing and digging in mud outside (and tracking it in!), they love to help me cook (and get dirty fingers on everything), they love to play with lots of toys (and leave the previous one out), they love to carry a cup of Cheerios around (and drop them on my floor and stomp on them the second they fall!),, and they love playing with stickers (and sticking them on everything (including themselves, my walls and everything else). It's part of the life around here and if I want to embrace their smiles and laugh when they do something cute (and muddy!) I have to get over my need for clean. It doesn't mean that at nap time and bed time I can't spend forever cleaning things, or that I can't have my vacuum out for a few minutes while they run inside after being the sandbox, or even put them to work with a rag after they smear browning batter all over my cabinet.

Learning to have a happy balance has been hard for me. I have either ignored my children to keep the house spotless and yell every time they move a thing, or I have just lived in dirty all the time while I spend any down time with some much needed relaxing. I've been trying in the past few months to be in more of a routine, and have times of the days for cleaning and times of the day (the majority) for enjoying whatever my kids are doing, no matter how big the mess! It's not perfect, but its making life run a little more smoothly :)

Here's a messy time! Brownies (and the spatula licking that comes with it!