“Oh, I can’t have you over,” other moms always say. “My house is a mess.” I arrive for a play date and as soon as I come in the door, I’m told, “Don’t judge me, the house is a wreck. No, seriously, it’s destroyed. Please don’t look. I’m so embarrassed.”
Lies. Lies, lies, lies.
Because when I go into that house, the house of the mom who is so apologetic about the condition of her kitchen, or the toys in her living room, or the invisible dirt in her bathroom, I can’t decide if I want to laugh in her face or deck her.
Girl. Please. Not only is your house not messy, your house is immaculate. You have guest towels laid out. Your children’s spilled toys remain confined to a rug – which, by the way, is not sprinkled with crumbs. Sippy cups stay in the kitchen. Playdough dare not enter here, and the dog doesn’t shed. Insisting your house is dirty speaks to clinical delusion, your misunderstanding of small children, your secret desire to make me feel guilty, or maybe your desperate need for reassurance. Probably all of the above. Seriously, stop it.
So for all of you mamas insisting your immaculate house is messy, and all of you normal mamas therefore afraid to have anyone come into your house ever, because that level of clean is just not achievable due to kids/time/dogs/life/constant art projects, let’s set some guidelines. You can either have a sense of shame or small children, and I’ve got three boys under five. So I’ll spill it.
Normal: There is a room in your house that always stays cluttered and messy, and much like Lady MacBeth’s hands, will never be clean. In my house, it’s the dining room, furnished with my great-grandmother’s cherry dining suite, including buffet and china cabinet. I sew on the table, store art supplies in and around and between the hunt board and the wine rack – remember when the Harbison AC Moore went out of business? Yeah, it relocated to my dining room – stash file cabinets in available floor space, dry glitter art next to the sewing machine, and sometimes set up train tracks under the table. None of that gorgeous cherry is currently visible. I neaten this room for birthdays and holidays requiring fine china. Otherwise, you aren’t allowed to see it, Judgy McJudgerson.
Normal: Your laundry is everywhere. Current house tally: five clean baskets in the laundry room (blocking the auxiliary fridge and probably creating a certifiable fire hazard). One clean basket in the master bedroom. A clean load in the dryer and one in the washer. There is no basket of dirty clothes anywhere. Therefore we’re this week’s laundry heroes! Will those clean baskets make it to folding, or even more daunting, into drawers? Maybe. I’m feeling it lately. But a relative of mine, who shall not be named, once had to hide her kids’ Christmas present – a pet snake – from all the kids and her husband for two weeks. She stashed it under the laundry baskets in her bedroom. The secret kept. She’s the all-time laundry hero, ladies.
Normal: Your sink is full of dishes, your dishwasher is full of dishes, your table and counter are full of dishes, and you can’t find a clean spoon. So you use a teaspoon for your cereal. When you get to the giant soup spoon or worse, start to contemplate that spikey grapefruit spoon at the bottom of the silverware drawer, then you need to do a load. But only enough that the kids have plates for lunch.
Normal: Your kids’ bath toys are right where they left them after the bathwater drained. Don’t pull that shower curtain shut. We know what’s behind it.
Normal: Some type or types of toys are scattered all over the house and no matter how hard you try, or what bribes you offer, or what god you pray to, you never get every piece picked up. True story: I have found those stupid ball-pit balls in my washer, my front yard, and stuffed between carseats. We have the same problem with duplos, which I confiscated on really tenuous grounds, and Star Wars figures. If I come over to your house and notice plastic army men in the space behind your toilet, I’m not judging.
Normal: Cups and cups and cups. Everywhere. All the time. Somehow we didn’t perish of dehydration in the 80’s when my mother wouldn’t let us out of the kitchen with a Tupperware sippy of Kool-Aid. But it’s 2014, and my kids will shrivel into complaining oblivion without a cup of juice at all times. Except they leave them everywhere, and then get a new one. They now hold up drinks and ask, “Is this good, Mama?” before taking a swig. So do yours. Don’t lie.
Normal: Art Damage. My bath tub has some hopefully/maybe/eventually will fade tie-dye stains. I need to repaint part of the kitchen wall, because who let her toddlers use her acrylics? This mama! At the very least, your toddler took a pen to the wall and you haven’t had time to magic erase it yet.
Normal: You can’t see the floor of your car. Where else are you supposed to toss all those Chick-fil-A cups? Or the spare diapers? Or the dirty sippy cups? Seriously. Your husband probably complains about it.
Normal: You forgot trash day again. So your supercan’s overflowing and your recycling bin looks like a seriously committed alcoholic lives at your address, but really you just forgot garbage day two weeks in a row. It’s cool. As long as you got the trash out of the house, you’re a garbage day winner! High-five!
Normal: You have not dusted. Perhaps ever, or at least since your parents last visited. I think I maybe own Pledge? Somewhere? Don’t look at the upper bookshelves, especially if you suffer from allergies.
Normal: Some part of your house is in do-not-use disrepair, and has been for longer than you would publicly admit. My oldest son has never seen us use the shower in our master bath. He’s four. We need to replace the tile and just haven’t managed somehow. I thought this was a horrible, abnormal, horrific shame until, in flagrant disregard for social mores, I mentioned this to other mothers. Two of them copped to unusable bathrooms. One mentioned a deck with holes. Another has to warn visitors not to attempt the front stairs. I salute you, my sisters in disorder.
So there you have it. Either your house is really, really clean, and you should stop apologizing, or at the very least you can stop your shame and host playdates for once. We’re all in the same boat. I won’t look in your dining room if you don’t look in mine.
You had me nodding through the whole thing- I have marker drawings on the walls that are at least two months old and an unusable bathroom. 😉
I browsed through the comments but I didn’t see where anyone addressed a big issue with how difficult it is to keep a house clean: STUFF. Most of us have a ridiculous amount of stuff that contributes to the messiness of the house. If your child is pulling out 50 toys at a time perhaps you have 45 too many? If your sink is full of dishes perhaps it is time to cut back and make it more difficult to pull out more just because the current one is dirty. I have found that as I have gotten rid of stuff, even at it’s messiest it only takes about an hour to clean my entire house. I have 3 children and we are home all day since we homeschool so the potential for mess is there, we just control it by controlling the amount of stuff that is allowed in our home. If it doesn’t have a proper space to be stored then it doesn’t belong. If it gets pulled out and left on the floor then it doesn’t belong. We have started learning that we prefer to keep things that are special to us rather than just having a bunch of junk just because someone else says we should.
[…] post originally appeared, in slightly altered form, in Columbia SC City Mom’s […]
Thank you thank you thank you for posting this! This is my house to a T! And long story some what shorten… my youngest daughter who is 3.5 called our pediatricians office last Friday morning and told the receptionist mommy wasn’t waking up… my phone was on silent and I was right next to her watching SpongeBob with my 2 year old boy on the other side… well the receptionist called the non emergency line…. and 5 cops showed up with an ambulance! Well you would have thought my house was the most disgusting place this paramedic had ever seen! She said there was poop on our floor (there wasn’t) said my son’s bed didn’t look like it had been changed in months and that our living situation wasn’t good for our kids…. my house is not dirty. The kitchen is usually clean, the bathrooms are clean… we don’t drink alcohol or do drugs… So none of that is laying around house! But with 4 kids, they come with a lot of stuff! Mainly clothes.. So we have clothes all over the house… all clean! The cops were understanding and the other paramedic was to… So the one paramedic lady called CPS on me! Also, giving then false information. A lady from social services came to our house. She had to question everyone who lived in the house (scared kids shitless because they were scared their mommy was going to be taken away!) And asked me a bunch of questions… pretty much asking me if I was a good mother. And then had to take pictures of our house. Going through each room to tell me what I needed to improve… like I didn’t already know! She said my oldest son’s (10 years old) room smelled like urine… for a while he was a bed wetter. She told me to still try to get the smell out! Needless to say… it totally sucked! But! I know my priorities are taking care of my 4 kids…. doctor, dentist, allergist, therapy appointments, plus after school activities! AND take care of my needs to keep me sane and healthy! I don’t feel ONE bit of sorry that my house isn’t pristine… it just isn’t in the stars for me to also worry about keeping my house spotless!!!
I won’t judge someone with a messy house and small children and no stay at home parent. I’ve got three kids. When I worked full time, went to school part time and had one child, my house was picked up. Now that I’ve got three kids and am home with two of them, it is a lot more to do but my house is rarely messed up. My kids know what cabinet the art stuff is in and that they have to do art in the kitchen. They know after bath, the toys get picked up while the water is draining. Even my two year old puts his own dishes in the dishwasher. They have their toys picked up before pjs and nightly tooth brushing. I’m a go getter. Yes, I’m tired beyond belief but I love being busy. I love that my kids are learning responsibility. Everything has a place. Every closet, every cupboard, every room is organized. If you use something and you’re done with it, put it away. Then you don’t have to worry about it later. Chores in the morning, fun the rest of the day. I’m not saying that our house doesn’t have its days and if it’s the day someone stops by, who gives a crap. Shit happens and I won’t dwell on what doesn’t get done because I know it eventually will.
Here is the the thing, I grew up in a house where keeping it clean felt like the first priority all the time. My mom was always cleaning and fussing about something needing to be clean. Her house is and always has been immaculate! I’m not. I didn’t get that gene. I never did. Not cleaning for me isn’t about being lazy. It’s about being overwhelmed. It’s about wanting to spend more time with my three kids and husband than with the laundry. We are a work outside of the home family and by the time all get home, I’m done! Dinner, bath time, and then bed time come quickly. If I have te energy, dishes get done and laundry gets started. If not, it waits another day. It is how I have to function. I just bought a new house. I am making an extra effort to keep it tidier–but it isn’t or will never be up to my mom’s standard! Her voice is always in my head–so I apologize to guests–
It’s good to know I’m not alone. For those offended by this article, just remember we are all different and our normal is different. Just because I’m not the tidiest mom on the block, doesn’t mean I don’t teach my kids responsibility or to care for their things–it means we have different ways, maybe less structured, but no less important.
As a non American casual reader who somehow got here, I really feel the need to highlight a point that I haven’t seen in others comments. You are completely right, it’s impossible to keep such a house tidy. The problem isn’t that you are untidy, the problem is that you own too much stuff. I will repeat it again: YOU OWN TOO MUCH STUFF. It’s so obvious, just read through your post, it’s an endless list of how you can’t really manage all the things you own. Why you need so many cups if they end up filling your house? Why do you have a shower you haven’t used in 4 years? But on top of everything, why do keep doing so much laundry if you don’t dust? Clothes gets dirty from dust, especially from the one surrounding the cabinet. It’s so obvious yet somehow everyone seems to ignore it here.
I really can’t wrap my head around the American way of living sometimes.
Such a humorous look inside regular homes! I don’t give one second thought to the parents who have decided I’m lazy… Having 6 kids will do that to you. I don’t even blink at the writers here who say I’m using my kids as an excuse not to clean… I sure as hell do use them…I hate cleaning! Like, why is the washing not folded? Because I spent an hour bathing my kids and washing their hair. Why are the toys out? Because we were dancing in the kitchen cooking dinner tonight. And why aren’t the beds made? Because we stole all the blankets to make a cubby house
Ditto and Thank you.
I swear you were looking in my windows as you were writing this!!! I have a sign that you will see as you walk in my front door that says “my house is NOT messy…the kids are making memories” Yes there are things lying on the floor and the table and pretty much every available surface but my daughter will only be little for a short time and she will remember me playing with her rather than me saying I cant cause I have to clean.