The Reality of Being a Housewife

I blog about cleaning and cleaning systems such as The FlyLady, but in the spirit of transparency, I’d like to show you the reality of what my house, particularly my kitchen, often looks like on Friday mornings.  I warn you, it’s not pretty…

What my kitchen often looks like on Friday Morning

Yeah, it’s that bad

In fact, this is what my kitchen looks like this morning.  That’s right, as I type these words, this is what my kitchen currently looks like.  Isn’t it lovely?  These pictures were taken right before I sat down to blog.

You heard me.  I’m writing this in this my spare moments around cleaning because that’s the only way I have time to write.

Why am I showing you this?

Well, because I want you to understand that we all get behind.  For me, this is actually a typical Friday morning for my kitchen.

Sometimes I manage to get the groceries all put away on Thursdays, but more often than not, I have my grown children and  three-year-old grandbaby running loose in my house on Thursday evenings when I get home from the store, we usually eat out on Thursday nights (and to be fair to Draco, this is part of the reason why) and to be completely honest, I’m disabled (and currently sick to boot) and by the time I finish with all the running, it’s usually 5-6 pm and I’m just plain tired and hurting in places most people aren’t aware they even have because of my injuries from two years ago.

I have been reading some of the questions The FlyLady gets asked as well as some over on Clean Mama, another Facebook Page I’m fond of that seems to be loosely based on a similar system to FlyLady’s, and one of the things I see asked over and over goes something like this:

My house (or specific area of the house) is a wreck and I don’t know where to start!

It’s easy to find yourself overwhelmed.  Hell, I still get that feeling once in a while myself, especially on Friday mornings when my kitchen looks like the photos above (or worse, because it has been worse).

The honest truth is, my house is very rarely 100% clean with no tasks that need to be done.  We have six (yes, I said SIX) dogs in the house plus three adults.  Mini-Me and her family are here nearly every other day as well and since they don’t currently have a washer and dryer, they’ve been doing laundry here.  My main rooms (living room, kitchen and bathroom) can look nearly perfect when they get here, but by the time they leave, sometimes you can’t tell I even cleaned anything that day.  It’s called “life happens” in our house and I’ve come to feel that it’s actually a relatively healthy attitude for me to have with my physical limitations.

When the kids and/or grandbaby are here, I don’t worry about the mess that’s being made.  I enjoy my family and time with them.  I don’t jump up and down cleaning constantly.  I don’t complain to them about the messes they’re making.  I just enjoy the time I have with them and worry about the house when they leave (or most often, the next morning).

No, I don’t stick to the FlyLady way, or any other “way” specifically, except my own.  I realized that this was one of the ways I was trapped in my own perfectionism and it was keeping me from enjoying my life.  I came to feel like I was constantly cleaning something.

Now, I have a set rule and the whole family knows.  Leave mom alone on Fridays and Mondays unless it’s an emergency.  Those are my two big cleaning days each week.  Fridays are to recover the house from a busy Thursday and Mondays are my weekly home blessing days so I do an almost full house straighten then to recover from Draco being off some weekends.

I used to let the house bother me, especially on Thursday nights/Friday mornings, but now I have that “life happens” attitude and I don’t let it bother me anymore.

What’s your house’s worst days for being a disaster?  Do you get overwhelmed when it is?  How do you handle it?  Let me know in the comments!  I’d love to hear from you!