Housework

"When I get a bigger house, it will be more organized, and it will stay clean". This is my mantra. The truth is that despite my best intentions, my home never manages to stay clean. I am not striving for magazine shoot clean, or even very clean, just clean enough that if someone stops by unannounced I am not unbearably embarrassed. I am forever making excuses, but it does seem my friends and family have a knack for showing up on the worst of days. I clean, I really do. But it is extremely short lived.

So what happens? Take today, as an example. Yesterday morning we all got together and made the house pretty decent. Not perfect, but clean enough. We were out most of the morning, the kids napped the afternoon away, and we went swimming after dinner. The next morning greeted us with what wasn't cleaned up from the night before. It wasn't too bad. I sat down to work this morning only to find a lot to do that needed to be done - now. Flash forward four and half hours of ignoring my children while sitting on the computer. Sure I looked at their finished puzzles, broke up their fights, and read some instructions, but overall they entertained themselves. Apparently the most entertaining thing to them is making a mess.

The unfortunate trade off to needing to work - and doing it from home - is that the house is the playground and it suffers. As I write this it's nearly five, the kids are eating animal crackers while watching cartoons, and I have spent the afternoon working even more. Now I will try to ignore the mess while I play with my kids, knowing that some things are more important.

The view from where I've been perched most of the day (no I don't know what's on the floor):