Muddled Mom. Muddled House.

Growing up, I had a friend whose mother I nicknamed Muddled Mom. Her house was always a mess. It looked like a crazy person lived there. There were always piles of stuff everywhere and the house smelled like dog. When my friend would come over she’d call and say she was leaving and arrive like 45 minutes later - she lived two blocks away. The mom herself always looked disheveled and half asleep. Nothing wrong with her, she wasn’t on drugs or anything, I guess she was just overwhelmed.

Now I know how she felt!

I am now Muddled Mom. I didn’t realize this until my neighbor came in for a tour of the house. I was thinking I was just your average overwhelmed part-time WAHM. Until I saw my house through someone else’s eyes. Now I can’t stop seeing it that way. I’m making a little progress but sometimes I just run out of steam. It just seems impossible.

How did this happen? I was always so neat and clean when I lived on my own, although the apartments I had were like 500 sf, so it didn’t take much time to do a wall to wall cleaning. I was single for a loooong time. I didn’t meet Hubby until I was almost 30 and although we cohabitated immediately it took us five years to get married. My only problems were cats and shabby furniture – one sort of causes the other…take a nice, pricey chair, add a cat, and in a couple of days the chair will be a big shredded mess. Yeah, we should have got them declawed but at the time it seemed so inhumane. And who cares about them scratching things up when you’re renting an apartment and have hand-me-downs and IKEA disposable furniture?

Anyway…where was I? Oh yeah…shabby furniture, and cats. Add a hubby who is a pack rat and not much of a cleaner, a couple more cats, a move to a house. The place was still not bad. A little cluttered in HIS parts of the house but not bad overall.

So what did me in? Well, I hate to say it, because they are the center of my universe and the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, but, well, it was those darn kids.

First of all, they leak toys. If I go upstairs right now, there’s about a 98% chance that there will be a line of toys from their room, through the hall, to our room. Yes, I know they have too many toys. It’s not MY fault if hubby is reliving his childhood by indulging them with every toy that he could not have. I used to pick up these toys faithfully, oh yes I did. At some point, the thought of picking up one more toy was just so overwhelmingly depressing that I just started stepping over them. I still go through over few days and pick them up, just not everyday.

Also, they are like little tornadoes of destruction. Yes, I know they are too hyper and need to learn respect for my stuff. I am working on it, really I am. These days they put away at least half of what they get into.

And there are things that are not their fault.

My house is, well, it looks like it needs a good cleaning. I don’t know how this happened. Perhaps it is my impaired aging vision that caused me to not see that cobweb above the window until yesterday or the grime around the window panes. The house I grew up in was like this too. I used to find spots that were dirty and clean them. When I was 11 or so I made a list of my goals in life and the top one was “ I will always keep my faucets clean and shiny”. My mother was furious!

Part of it is lack of interest. I think I have ADD. This seems unlikely since I did not have it as a child but I swear I have the symptoms. I will say “today I am going to do a deep clean” but then 5 minutes later or so I’ll start thinking about surfing the net or writing an article or logging into work to service pack a server. And then I think, I’ll clean tomorrow. And then tomorrow the kids come in before I am even awake and pull all my husband’s underwear out of the drawer and throw it around the room. They’ll put about half of it back of course. But I'll have to pick up the rest, and then I probably just won't feel like cleaning one more darn thing.