The Most Realistic And Pinterest Worthy Cleaning Tip Ever

I do not enjoy cleaning. But do you know what I hate even more? Having a messy house. Or more accurately, having a messy house that always seems to be cluttered no matter how much time I spend cleaning it.

I'm convinced that many of you feel the same way. When warmer weather arrives, we are all so ecstatic to be free of the sick days and winter claustrophobia that we begin to see our Pinterest boards fill up with cleaning schedules and de-cluttering tactics promising to enhance our spring cleaning experience and make our home look like a spread in Southern Living.

However, I have yet to find such a schedule that actually seems realistic to me. Yes, ideally I'd like to do a load of laundry a day or choose one room to deep clean each day of the week, but I'm not going to kid myself – life gets in the way of schedules. Although many of these lists have some good tips, some of the suggestions are just downright ridiculous. One of them actually lists steam cleaning grout as a weekly task. Um, no. “Ain't nobody got time for that!”

This is probably a more accurate representation of what a mother – especially one with small children – does to keep the house clean:

1) Wake up determined. Clean like a mad woman all morning, only to arrive at bedtime wondering why the house looks exactly like it did when she first woke up.

2) Rewash yesterday's mildewed load of laundry that she forgot about while she was busy making sure the toddler did not eat caterpillars or hurl himself from the trampoline.

3) Decide that the piles of toys strewn across the living room actually add to the décor.

4) Spend entirely too much time in the kitchen fixing snack after blessed snack, scraping dried food off all the heavily trafficked kid zones, and wishing it was more environmentally friendly/socially acceptable to use disposable dinnerware at all meals.

And, you know, various other things that don't end up on these beautiful Pinterest lists...but don't get me wrong – I still enjoy reading them and dreaming about becoming a superhuman organizing machine. It could totally happen, I suppose. I'm just not holding my breath.

Most of the time, I have a pretty good attitude about the clutter. It frustrates me that I can't always keep up with everything, but then I just remind myself that it's all about priorities. I do what I can during the day, but just like everything else in life, I have to decide what's most important. I can't do it all – no matter how many times I read “20 Steps To Becoming The World's Most Awesome Human Being” or whatever the latest pin might be.

So that's my cleaning tip – do what you CAN. Don't be lazy, but don't be overwhelmed either.

Perhaps I'm just too much of a skeptic, but I just don't think there are any magical tips that are going to keep me from having to do the SAME BLASTED THINGS every single day. That's just a part of life. And occasionally I'm going to find better things to do with my life.

 

 

Like dust the fan blades. Uh huh, about once a year...

On Losing Heart And Finding It Again

I know all of you are oblivious to deeply concerned about my minimal online presence lately, and I wish I could tell you that it's because I've been doing all this amazing intentional living where I'm having loads of fun playing with the kids, creating Pinterest-worthy baking masterpieces, reading books, writing a novel and such, but the truth is I've been in a state of MOM...Mental Overload Mode.

Although I can absolutely say that we have been enjoying the heck out of being back home and that there has been a lot of that stuff going on – like kite flying, first-time fishing (for Hannah), campfires, and family – there is also an awful lot of fatigue and stress that comes along with a big move, so there has been some of that as well.

For starters, our former house needs to get rented out ASAP and terrible pestilences need to quit plaguing our household...but I try to remind myself daily that these are mere inconveniences in the scheme of things, especially when I take into consideration all the things in our life right now that are so good.

Sure, there's no Chipotle, and milk costs an arm and a leg. And yes, we're back in the south and I've already had to try to break Hannah of adding extra syllables to her words ("Mama, can I have a SNA-YICK?"). But nothing can ever take away from what I've gained.

On our first night here I slept better than I have in months, maybe even years. I wondered why... Is this neighborhood quieter? Is it because the dog wasn't in our room? Is it because the kids' room is further away, and I can't hear every tiny moan and sigh anymore?

Perhaps it's some of that, or maybe even all of it, but I also believe that being here has ignited a spark of contentment that had burned out at some point a while back. I think I was too busy and distracted to notice, but being 1300 miles away from where your heart is does take its toll.

For Valentine's Day Hannah's preschool class at church made paper heart cut-outs, and she carried hers around proudly...until she laid it down somewhere and couldn't find it. She was quite sad about it, for a while, but eventually she accepted its absence, as we so often do when we lose our hearts. There's always enough to keep us distracted.

Then after church one evening, she ran up to me with the long-lost treasure in her hand.

“Mama! I found my heart!”

What joy it brings us to find it again. I know so completely how it feels. Our heart gets lost in the shuffle along the way, many times, and we use our distractions to make us forget. But when we stumble across it again, we're reminded of why we missed it so much in the first place. We're reminded of why taking care of it matters so much.

Of course, afterwards we went to Kroger where she promptly lost her little paper heart again, and I fear this time it shall never be found. Good thing this is just a metaphor and pretzels are a handy distraction.

But I'm just thankful to feel it again – that sense of wholeness, of being complete. The knowing that my heart is right where it belongs and that I have the tools to find it again if ever it becomes lost.

There are plenty of other precious things that can get lost when I lose sight of my heart...my patience, my temper, my joy...and that's why I've got to hold on tight. I've got to give my heart the nourishment it needs...love, faith, hope. It's the well from which all that purposeful, intentional living that I desire can spring forth.

I see a lot of 'losing heart' going on these days, and all I can say is, maybe we're meant to find it in each other. I wish we always had the courage to share ourselves in those real, raw, uninhibited moments that are so rare, when we connect with another human being so deeply that we say, “There! There is my heart. I've found it because it's the same as yours.”

We need more of that. We need more of the hope that we find in each other. Perhaps the greatest lesson we will ever learn is how to share our little paper hearts.

What Lies Beyond The Rain

Hands aching from my tight grip on the steering wheel, I eased up on the gas and strained to see the U-Haul I was following through the darkness and pouring rain. Several times, over the sound of Abram’s wailing, I heard my tires skid, and my hands gripped even harder. Water sloshed, lightning flashed, and I rummaged around, trying to find anything I could that might entertain the little guy for a few minutes and make the crying stop.

We’d brought along walkie talkies to communicate, but mine had died and my cell phone was beeping, as I’d not been able to find my charger at the hotel the night before. Abram’s cries were growing louder, so I dug my checkbook out of my purse and tossed it in the back seat, desperate for anything that could possibly buy me a few minutes of peace. The poor thing had had it with this journey, and so had I.

We were less than a hundred miles away from our destination, on this drive that we’d made so many times before, but the slower pace of the U-Haul coupled with the terrible weather had made this trip feel so much longer and more frustrating than ever before. And for some reason, I was scared.

I guess it was the limited communication and the thought of something happening to my precious cargo in the car seats behind me, but the last leg of this trip felt so ominous. It felt as though maybe we weren’t meant to be here. Why did it have to be so difficult? Why the bad weather? Isn’t this where we’re supposed to be going?

I prayed, out loud, voice shaking: “God, please just get us there. Help us to make it.”

Looking back, I realize how silly it seems now. It was just a storm, but my first reaction when things got tough was, “Why is this happening?” I guess I always reach for that falsity in the back of my mind – the idea that if we are doing what’s ‘right’, then life should be easy.

Silly me. Since when is life ever easy?

I know with all of my soul that we are right where we’re meant to be, especially when I see my kids loving this new place, leaping into piles of leaves and finding new treasures in the backyard. They have taken to these changes as though they’re not even changes at all, as though it’s the same life we’ve always lived.

And once again, they are teaching me.

They go with it. They go with life and all of its twists and turns, and they do it fearlessly. They trust their caretaker to meet their needs. They don’t question the changes. They don’t ask ‘why’ when there are obstacles.

Both kids have been battling some sort of awful infection for several days now, and when Abram awoke in the middle of the night with a 104 degree fever, I was scared. When Hannah’s eyes turned red and gunky and continued to get worse, I was scared.

But we got through it. And now that they’re on the mend, I realize that it was just a storm. We hit patches of bad weather all the time, and sure, they’re a little bit scary – and some are longer and scarier than others – but we always emerge on the other side, birds chirping and sunlight peeking through the clouds.

In the midst of these little rainstorms, our sunlight has been our love of being home. I can already see how this move, this tiny little adjustment we’ve made, is fine-tuning the course of our lives. How it has brought us so much more to cherish and love.

No doubt there are storms ahead, but all I can see is the joy that lies just beyond the clouds. If only I always had the eyes to see it…

Home Dreamin'

I am linking up with the Show and Tell via From Mrs To Mama because I love this topic, and I think it’s something that’s often on everyone’s mind. Especially for my little family...

You see, we never intended to stay where we are for very long. The move we made nearly seven years ago (ouch, it hurts to type that) was supposed to be a short-term thing, just a brief pit stop along our journey to our destination, wherever that was supposed to be. And then economical things happened, family things happened, job things happened (and didn’t happen), and we’ve been here for years longer than we ever intended or imagined.

And that’s okay. I know that plans don’t always go according to plan and that desires aren’t always fulfilled right when you want them to be. But we are a family of four (plus a furball) in a two bedroom house, and someday we will need to make some changes. While I don’t know if or when our desires will be satisfied, I do know a few things about what we like and what we’ll one day be looking for:

If you were searching for a home now, what would be on your "MUST" list?

Land.

My husband could live out the rest of his days in a hut in the middle of nowhere as long as he loved the land. I, on the other hand, do prefer some modern conveniences, but I get where he’s coming from. When you live in a place that you love, that’s a huge part of what makes it home to you. The rest can be worked on slowly, over time, but you can never change the land. So we want to find that spot that speaks to us and whispers softly, “You know you can’t see yourself living anywhere else.”

That’s out there somewhere, right? And it’s not a million dollars?

Favorite room:

I love my kitchen. When we were fixing up our house, the kitchen was the one room for which I picked out everything – the bright yellow paint, the tile, the cabinets…I’m quite happy with it, which is a good thing because I spend a majority of my life there. If/when we ever design another home, I would be happy to have another kitchen much like this one.

Favorite stores to shop for home décor:

Ha! Shop for home décor? People do that? I have to really like something in order to spend money on it, and therefore I honestly can’t even remember the last time I bought something for the house. My husband and I actually have watercolors up on our wall that we painted ourselves, matted in fancy black frames, because we are just that weird sophisticated.

The truth is I think I am way too eclectic to ever be able to design a cohesive home. When you like a little bit of everything, it’s somewhat difficult to decide on a particular style.

Maybe one day when we have our dream home I’ll finally be able to commit.


My dream home:

Something cabin-esque with cool rock work in a forest where there are never any fires. (What?)


Pinterest via Woodhouse Timber Frame

So there you have it. Let me know if you find anything out there that's perfect for us.