Sadly, that is not how I saw my kitchen this morning. In fact, it's not how I see my kitchen most mornings. Most mornings, this is how I see my kitchen:
I had already started to clean up a bit when I took this picture, and you can tell that I had to take the trash bag out of the can in order to put more things in it. I had already started to load the dishwasher, and I had already put away some of the things I had gotten out to make the boys lunches for school. I wish that I had some excuse for why it looked this way, like a party or a crazy night of having to shuttle the kids to practices or having had friends over, but none of those things happened, this is just my reality almost every single day. Let me say here and now that I am not whining about it or complaining about it or wanting sympathy in any way, I am merely sharing something with you that I think is important. One would be tempted to say "If you'd clean up after dinner, you wouldn't wake up to that every morning" and that is very very true. I've even said/thought that myself when other people have messes like this. Some might say that if Henry would help, things could be different, and to that I say let me tell you that he helps tremendously with cooking and cleaning and child rearing so that's not it either. Others still might say that I should get the kids to help clean up, and my reply to that is that I'm just glad that they got their homework done, their plates to the sink, and showers. So why don't I clean it up at night? Well, the truth is that after I've dealt with the kids all day in various combinations as well as made an attempt to do some business things and manage other household tasks, there's little energy or desire to deal with this. I spend my evenings after dinner trying to chill out for even a few minutes before bed. I'd rather deal with it in the morning when I'm not fried and the kids are happier.
The "ideal" picture that I posted first was actually the "after two hours of cleaning picture". Two hours seems ridiculous to spend on one room, but here's how that breaks down.
I really loaded the dishwasher, and I really (much to everyone's shock because it is known how I loathe hand washing dishes) washed dishes by hand because they wouldn't all fit in the dishwasher.
I then really hand dried them and really put them away. I didn't just shove things somewhere so that I could take a cool "after" pic.
I also put a bag back in the can much to the delight of my friend Heather, and I finally went through all those school papers that have been hanging out on the counter.
After I was finished with all that, I took a few minutes to gather the laundry and sort it. This is just one week of laundry folks, I haven't been slacking on that either.
I'm not one to cut people alot of slack, and I am awful about cutting myself slack, but I really think that I need to try to be a little easier on myself. What I did so far today isn't that big of a deal, but when you consider that I have to run full tilt to clean things up before the baby can undo what I just did, I don't think it's that small of a feat. So when people ask what it is that I do all day, I keep aaaall this from being seen. ~Kellie~
