My Beautiful Mess

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SweepTheMess #CollectiveBias

Wanna know what my life is really like? Behind the home page, painstakingly-written blog posts and carefully styled photos with just the right light? My life is messy. Utter and constant chaos. Can you relate? Is your life messy too? Your messes may not be the same as mine, but I’m sure that things sometimes get a little chaotic and disorganized for you too. That’s just life. With three little boys, my life often seems like a never-ending span of messes amid a whirlwind of energetic boys that I can only pretend to keep up with.

My real life is often full of blurry photos of boys I just can’t keep up with in less-than-ideal lighting because they don’t always do the cute stuff when the sun is streaming through the window.

Here is something I don’t often admit, at least not out loud. I often get discouraged by the turmoil. I wish I were better at keeping my family organized. I am always looking for ways to tame the chaos, new methods and systems to try. But, truth be told, my house does not look like a spread in a magazine. And it probably never will. In photos I take for my blog, there are all kinds of clutter and chaos just outside the frame. It’s all staged. My real life is a never-ending cycle: if the floors are vacuumed, there’s a mountain of dishes waiting to be done. The sink is actually empty? Well, you can bet there’s enough laundry to clothe a small village needing to be tended to. The last load of laundry is finally in the washer… wait, is there such a thing as the “last load of laundry”?! Don’t get me wrong, I do clean. I clean ALL. THE. TIME. My house is just never all clean, all at one time. See why I get discouraged?

He was supposed to be napping… I have no idea how he made such a mess and I didn’t hear a thing. Apparently, it was tiring work though.

Over the years, I have found little things that help. A load of dishes a day, for instance, helps keep the counters clear. Which, in turn, makes it easier to complete meal prep. A load of laundry a day, even if it doesn’t always (or ever) get folded and put away, keeps everyone in mostly clean clothes… There are the occasional days we get to the store and I realize there’s spaghetti sauce on my toddler’s pants… whoops. And a sweep (or two or three) of the kitchen every day makes it look so much cleaner than it really is. Bonus: it keeps odd choking hazards out of the baby’s mouth. Baby N is in the stage of taste-testing every speck and spot he can manage to get his hands on. Whether we are cutting hair, doing science experiments or art projects, a clean floor is one thing I need to stay on top of, for the safety of my family. Good products that I can trust make the mundane and monotonous part of my life a little less so, or at least help it pass more quickly. Flour sack dish cloths to dry the dishes, my DIY laundry basket dresser to help me contain the laundry explosion, and, most recently, the O-Cedar Angler Broom to help me quickly and efficiently clean the floors are some of my very favorite, can’t-live-without items that I use everyday.

Here’s one more secret. When I’m feeling discouraged about our chaos, I just have to do is look at my children. I mean really look. Not at their dirty faces and the mischief they are causing, but at how they are learning and exploring their world. I have to look past the disarray to find just how amazing and beautiful this parenting thing really is. Sure, I’m angry that every single toy has been pulled off their shelves, but when Little J tells me about how his Angry Bird cars had a race with the Thomas trains and the Dusty Crophopper airplane had to save Spider-Man before the dinosaurs could eat him, it suddenly becomes more than just too many toys all over the floor. The magic of a three-year-old’s imagination is, indeed, beautiful. The entire silverware basket from the last load of dishes I just ran through the dishwasher becomes a rowdy band as Baby N learns more about cause and effect… and sound. Big J used an entire bag of marshmallows and half a box of toothpicks to create his marshmallow house masterpiece. That sparkle in my sweet boys’ eyes when they master a new skill, or when that light bulb finally lights up, is amazing. My life is a mess. An adventurous, chaotic, sticky, slimy mess full of new discoveries and light bulb moments every day. A beautiful mess. My beautiful mess and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

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