The story below is from our January/February 2020 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Life with kids is messy. I don’t always clean it up.
I’ve been writing about homes for several years, which has been a blast of a job. I get to hobnob with some of Virginia’s best architects and interior designers, and have walked through million-dollar homes that are outfitted with the best furniture and gadgets that money can buy. I’ve loved every bit of it—except the return back to my house.
I’m the mom of four kids, three of whom are boys (think muddy cleats and imperfect toilet aims). They range in age from 14 to six, and our house is loud, crazy—and messy. It can be jarring to come from a home that is camera-ready for a photo shoot, with every surface gleaming and dust bunny obliterated, to your own real-life chaos.
On the home front, I used to swing wildly from ‘totally on top of it’ to ‘disastrous mess.’ If I was trying hard and someone mucked up my try, with, say, spilling milk into every crevice of a freshly mopped floor, I’d feel like, hey, what’s the point? We should just live in our filth, because every effort I make to Martha Stewart this place will be met with messy resistance. So I’d give up for a few days, and the kids would be eating cereal out of plastic Tupperware containers because all the bowls were dirty.
In 14 years of momhood, I’ve mostly accepted that life with kids has to find the middle ground. There is no perfect home, and there definitely isn’t when small people live with you. But giving up isn’t a great option, either. You’ve got to decide what level of order you can truly reinforce and what matters most to you, and let the rest go. You can deal with toys littered across the floor, but the throw pillows have to be just so? Great. You can abide toothpaste all over the sink, but a huge laundry pile makes you crazy? Go with that.
Even when you have your priorities straight, surprises of the messy variety are still going to sneak up on you. We’ve got a stain on the ceiling from the time my six-year-old was left alone in the upstairs shower and got most of the water on the bathroom floor (drip, drip). We’ve got blue and orange paint flecks on the kitchen table from when my daughter used the contraband art supplies with the babysitter (those aren’t washable paints, my love). We have a graveyard of broken lamps in the storage area, and I’d bet you a date night with a free babysitter that my kids have hidden destroyed home goods that I don’t even know about, and am too tired to remember that I own.
Water is going to drip through your ceiling, moms, real or proverbial. Something you own is going to get paint on it. We try our best to instill the lessons in our kids—don’t be a slob, clean up after yourself. Have respect. But I hope they also learn that mistakes will be made. You clean them up, you learn what not to do, you move on. Sometimes mistakes leave a mark. Perfection isn’t a worthy goal, at home or anywhere else.
I try to enjoy my house tours more now, and compare less. House tours are like Instagram—it’s a highlights reel, it’s the best filter that blurs all the blemishes. All of the bad stuff is hidden in the closet.
There will be a season of my life when my house can be shiny and clean, if I want it to be that way, and I can ditch my minivan for something two-seater and sporty. I’ll sit on my white couch in the silence and miss the sound of muddy cleats, clomping across the floor. I’ll probably wonder what the kids are doing, and why haven’t they called?
Show me your own graveyard of broken lamps at @crippel on Instagram or send me an email at christyrippelwrites@gmail.com.
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