Keep It Real

I want to be honest.

Honestly, I do!

I am so not together.  It's been an ongoing struggle and I often have bouts where I think I am on top of things or I get in a rhythm for a couple months and all of a sudden I am Flylady and I have wings......

Then I come crashing to earth.

Confession:  I had one goal today....clean my bathroom and bedroom (it hasn't been done in over a month).  When we moved in I had a nice dream that Thursday would be master bed and bath day.  I would clean these, make them sparkle, sprinkle fairy dust and shut the door letting it await to be a retreat for the weekend.  I think since we moved in I've cleaned it once.  hmmmm.....not good!  Where was I?  Oh yeah, confession.  I was up at 6:58 this morning greeted by the smacking hand and cooing of a little girl named Charlotte and it popped in my head that today, I am going to clean my room!  And as a bonus the bathroom.  Okay now to the confession part.....it is 3:06 and I just finally got done.  And when I say done, I mean it's okay.  Not the way I would really like to do it but it's acceptable and about a million times better than it was.

My mom is coming because Charlotte has a follow up hearing test tomorrow.  My mom and dad own their own cleaning company.  Let me just let you savor that for a moment.


Yep, my mom is a business owner of a cleaning company!!!  Now my mom is awesome and seriously they are so very good at their job.  I wish I could hire them!  But.....my mom knows how to clean!  And despite the fact that she tried desperately to teach me this art,  I did not inherit this gene.  I think it went to my sisters.  They are amazing when it comes to cleaning too.  So when my mom comes, I get excited!  So excited to have her that I have no desire for her to take one look around and want to clean my house!  So......I try to clean.

Now, on to the theme of keeping it real.

My 7 month old, oh yeah, I mentioned her.  She's the one that wakes up at 6:58 smacking me in the face.  She likes to be held.....a lot!  This posture makes cleaning difficult and is probably why I do not work for the family business.  I love this little 7 month old drool ball, but life has changed.  I've been forced to get more "real" with myself.  Clean enough has become the goal.  Picked up enough is the vision.  I know many of you mother and father more children than my three, but I've never parented three before so I am new at this.

My expectations for myself have had to change and I'll be honest when I say that the three, four....no three loads of laundry spilling over in my living room rocking chair is about to make me hyperventilate.  I'm supposed to be honest here so it's more like five loads.

Every night, I head to bed thinking I've failed.  I mean some days I stare in the mirror and flex my muscles and say, "everyone is alive, everyone is fed, good day."  But for the most part I go to bed with my to do list barely begun.

If you are a person who is stellar at cleaning and organizing, I applaud you!  Use that talent the Lord gave you and then come blow some pixie dust on me and maybe I'll catch it too.  If you are someone that has to look for two weeks for the toilet brush because it's been months since you saw that thing, I encourage you to keep looking!  It will turn up and you probably haven't been able to find it because you have been so busy in other projects for others that the simple act of cleaning that toilet is getting in the way of much greater needs.  I applaud you as well!  Thank you for serving us when we need it.
And if you are like me who is confessing that I am not perfect, I am really just holding my head above water with a baby and a move, I applaud you too.  Crisis cleaning and planning and feeding and shopping won't always be our norm.  Right?  Please tell me I won't always be in crisis mode!

My school room looks worse than the day we moved in.  At the rate I'm going we will get to start school when Christmas break ends.  It's easier to just shut the door and forget it for awhile.  So here I am with a shut schoolroom/den door, talking to my blog and wishing I felt like I had the time to fix a cup of tea and sit and finish my book, but I don't.....remember those three....ahem....four.....ahem, okay, okay, it's five loads of laundry on my rocking chair!  But hey, at least I have a clean bathroom!  I can soak in that big tub of mine and pray for sanity and energy to maybe work on that schoolroom and maybe school planning because I have to remind myself, I homeschool my children too.  They need to have a teacher.  Where are we going to put that?  Maybe on top of the five piles of laundry!

I, in no way want to discourage anyone with a blog entry but a blog does lead one to be somewhat transparent with their readers so here goes,  to finish I will confess a few shortcomings/flaws/facts and then I will add one thing that I think wraps it all up into the "it's going to be okay" category.  Because, that's what bloggers do.  We be honest and then wrap up everything into nice little packages so that hopefully you can take something from my ramblings and my mistakes.

Confessions:
1.  I just cleaned out the litter box for the first time in 2 weeks.  (After bathing myself in Clorox, I seriously deserve a cup of tea!)
2.  When I had Charlotte my mom spent a good portion of her time cleaning out and organizing my kitchen/pantry.  I was hormonal and loved my mom for it and then after I was up and about and actually able to enjoy the fruits of her labor and try not to mess it up, my husband informs me that we are moving.
3.  I am a hoarder.  But I am also a really good hider.  A talent to go with the curse.
4.  We have been here since the first of June.  I think everything in the house might have gotten cleaned once.  So everything in a two month period.  That means that I will get back to my bathroom/bedroom sometime in the end of September.
5.  I am really good at getting laundry done until it comes to folding it and putting it up.  It seriously may sit on my rocking chair for a week or, yeah, just a week!  Let's leave it at that!
6.  For a long while I thought my home was really supposed to look like an HGTV design makeover.  Which made me discontented and delusional.  I live here, all day.  I am here all day with three little people.  We are making messes all day long!  I could be cleaning up one mess while simultaneously three more are being made.  HGTV is not reality.  Although it has really deepened my love for a farmhouse sink and concrete countertops!
7.    I love to cook.  Love it!  I hate to clean the kitchen and if it does not get done within a few minutes of finishing dinner, I'll be staring at those suckers till I start dinner the next day.
8.  One thing that does get clean everyday is the children.  They all three get baths everyday.  I know many think I am crazy for this but they seriously play hard and eat food and sweat and stink up the joint so my children are scrubbed everyday.  Rain or shine!
9.  Dust comes back so why bother?  My mom has been waging a dust war for decades and she hasn't licked it yet.  So I've given up and raised the white flag.
10.  Those elves that come to help the shoe cobbler must have died with Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.  I'd pay them though if they came!  Although, I don't want shoes, I want a clean house and organized school room.

I'm a mess.  I don't always get it all done but I am trying to be effective.  I have goals and priorities outside of the physical appearance of this house.  I have spiritual housecleaning to do!  I want to work on my character and pray that God is working on it as well.

"For this reason (refer to the previous verses for the reason), make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control (uggghhh!  failed on that today too!) and self control with steadfastness (could definitely use that!) and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.  Therefore brothers be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall."
2 Peter 1:5-10