It's better to be happy and messy than to be clean and mean, unless you are trying to sell your house, I guess.
Where there are small children, a house can never be completely clean all at once. Entropy is the rule. Sparkling bathrooms have to be smeared. Gleaming mirrors must be smudged. Beds beg to be jumped on. Crumbs need to be scattered. Stickiness must be spread throughout the kitchen. Freshly folded towels cry out, "Unfold us and trample us onto the crumby, sticky kitchen floor!" Then the phone rings. "Can we come look at your house in 10 minutes?"
Where's the balance between keeping your house ready to show, and being able to live in your own house? What level of cleanliness can I reasonably expect from myself and my children. I feel like all I ever do is clean and tell my kids, "No, you can't do that because it will make a mess." My stomach twists into a knot every time the phone rings.
Maybe I should just relax and let people see our house how it really is, instead of trying to pretend we don't live here. Maybe we should just go live with Grandma until the house sells.
5 comments:
I vote for living with Grandma! Hopefully it sells soon! Good luck my little yellow friend. :)
OUCH! I had a friend who threw EVERYTHING in the bathtub and shut the curtain when she would show her house. Good luck!
It is so hard to sell a home and live there. i know, we have done it twice. However, I only had one child at the time. Good luck!
That is such a hard thing. I suggest putting a sign on the door as you leave that says, "Three very small children live here (with their parents)...it may not be perfectly clean, but we are perfectly happy." (you know I am, in part, kidding).
Good luck. And by the way; you are a great writer. you said it all perfectly in this post - there must always be a mess if anyone under six lives there...
I heard someone say that their trick was to throw all the clutter in a laundry basket, and put it in the trunk of their car if they had to show the house with little notice (just don't forget to get the basket afterward!!)
Maybe try spending as much time outside, or at the park as possible? My sister says she has her kids eat outside whenever she can to keep the crumbs and spills out of the house.
The house we ended up buying when we were house shopping was from a family with 4 kids, a dog and a cat. It wasn't pristine when we looked at it, and we still ended up buying it. :)
Good luck!
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