Sorry We’re Not Sorry that our Home is a Mess

It only took me a year to realize that my house will never truly be clean. I have yet to accept it. There are going to be crumbs everywhere all the time. On the sofa. Smashed into the carpet. Sprawled across the bare floors. Places I would never have thought there would be crumbs.. there are. We find them in our bed sometimes. What in the world? There are drips of juice and milk smeared across the counters. Soaked into the carpets and couches. There are rarely dry counters in our house. Don’t get me started on the amount of toys this child has. Those visiting our home must assume we have more than one child by the amount of toys spread throughout the house. Seriously, there are toys in virtually every room in our house. I will not admit how many times I have stepped on a toy and wanted to cry out in pain. This kid doesn’t even have Legos yet!

For the first few weeks after having my son, I assumed that I was just really bad at time management, and that I would eventually get the hang of it all. I assumed that cleaning and keeping the house clean would only get better and easier as time went on. Wrong. I was so effing wrong. It’s worse in fact. Now that my son is mobile, it’s gotten 100x worse. Sometimes I find myself following him around the house with our Dirt Devil hoping to vacuum up some of the crumbs before they end up elsewhere. I started using one of those bowls that allow a child to get food out of it when they want thinking it may help minimize crumbs. Again wrong. He shakes it around creating more crumbs that seep throughout the little barriers on the bowl. His sippy cups help to minimize spills, to an extent, until he decides he wants to start smacking it against something. I’m pretty sure my son is determined to make the house a mess every day. When he gets his bath at night, he oftentimes wants to play the game, “how much water can I get out of the tub” which again not only gets me soaked but also the entire bathroom. The funny thing is, when he starts splashing he braces himself and closes his eyes. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he doesn’t seem to mind. At the end of the day when he finally decides he has created enough messes and is ready for bed, I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour just cleaning up after him. I spend time cleaning counters, tables and his high-chair, sweeping the floor, vacuuming and cleaning up his endless piles of toys. That’s not even all. I then spend time cleaning up my messes that were ignored because of my focusing on the messes he was making. Before I even get to focus on me and relax a little bit it’s 9 or 10 at night and all I want to do it sleep. Long story short, our home is destined to be dirty. Not just a few days out of the month or week but every damn day. There is nothing we can do. Once one mess is cleaned up, another one is destine to show up.

Here is a letter to our friends and family who come visit us at our home..

Sorry that we’re not sorry that our home is a mess. It’ll never be clean no matter what we do. You can judge us and try to convince us otherwise, but we will not agree with you. We will not hire a maid to clean our home, so don’t even suggest it. Our floors will have toys covering them, there will be crumbs and potential drool and spill marks on our couches and more than likely there will be sticky spots on door knobs and tables. This is a warning. We do our best to keep things cleaned, but we are primarily focused on making our son happy. We spend more time teaching him new things, reading to him and playing with him then focusing on the messes. If we spent all of our time focusing on the messes, we are going to miss seeing our little boy grow up. Seeing him grow and learn new things will always be more important than a messy home any day of the week.

So, I repeat…sorry that we’re not sorry that our home is a mess. We wouldn’t trade the messes for anything.