I have such a long way to go in this journey. My house is looking tons better overall, but I am still so quick to ditch the daily habits that make the difference between continuing the improvement and sliding back down into chaos.
The past three days have been crazy. A very painful ear infection in my 3yo, Bible Study, Mom’s group meeting, long-ago-scheduled almost-an-hour-away doctor appointment, etc. blah blah, means that I’ve ignored some things that I shouldn’t.
And yesterday I heard a speaker on organization who only made me feel like an inept idiot. (I really don’t care to hear people talk about organization who don’t even acknowlege that it’s a legitimate struggle for some people.)
And yesterday, when I was trying to pry my miserable 3yo off of me for just a few minutes to pick up at least a few things, my wonderfully honest 8yo said something along the lines of, “You mean, you actually want to pick up?”
He received a rather dirty look.
I mean, really? Our house is so much less cluttered. I sweep the floor and do the dishes every single day (mostly). There’s always a clean bowl for cereal. We have an organized system instead of a big abyss of shoes at the back door. The living room rarely has trash on the floor and if it does, it doesn’t stay there for weeks. The loveseat almost never has clean laundry piled on it. There have been clean socks in his drawer every day for months.
And yet, somehow, I’m still the mom whom he’s surprised to see picking up?
I am more than a little depressed about this.
(But, although yesterday I was lamenting his brutal and innocent honesty, this morning I was thankful for it when he informed me that he can hear us talking in our master bedroom through the vent in his room. Good information to have, don’t you think?)
Today, I’m trying to refocus my frustrations and feelings of failure into renewed motivation.
I HAVE to tackle the master bedroom. It’s my room. It represents me. I hide it from the rest of the world, but my family sees it.
Just like the posters of Kirk Cameron told you something about me when I was 12, the boxes of odds and ends cluttering the floor and the piles of clothes on the dresser tell you something about me now.
I still have lots of drawers and spots in the house to go through, but the master bedroom is the last large-scale disaster area. I don’t think I can be truly changed until it is changed.
Anonymous says
Oh geez, I am not sure for myself that I would want to find out about the vent thing. That would be a bit of a damper on, well other things…
Another pillow- for the boy or the vent – might be helpful 🙂
Heather says
So true about the master bedroom. While the kitchen is the heart of a home, the master bedroom is the heart of our marriage.
kay says
I appreciate your blog because you understand disaster area mess. While something can be learnt from the organised often they can inflict a lot of shame.