I just stumbled upon this over at Texas Tanners and thought I'd share it with everyone. It's a printable!
As a stay at home mom, I put this level of perfection and expectation on myself. Since my job is AT home, FROM home and IN my home, my home should be the epitome of cleanliness and order at all times. NOT! (Thanks to my husband who is helping me see this lie more clearly. Love you, Babe.)
Yeah, you might walk in my house and find everything sparkling clean like the Cleaver's home thiiiiis time, but the neeeext time you drop in - look out! Piles here, projects there. Toys spread about. Laundry covering the "cutch" as my little one calls it. Dirty dishes in the sink with supper on 'em. It's sometimes tidy, sometimes not. It's called L-I-F-E. Now, I'm to do my best. But I'm also am not supposed to beat myself up everytime I go to bed with folded clothes to be put away, floors that didn't get swept and the cat box that should have been changed last week! Balance...life is a balancing act.
We LIVE in our home. We're not a magazine family who drops our kids off at school/daycare at 7 AM in the morning, parents then heading to our respective offices for the day leaving behind a picture perfect, stylish city flat we won't see again 'til after a restaraunt supper and that'll be around oh, 7 PM. It's not take-out Chinese and Central Park on the weekends. We live all day and all night in our house. (I am not trying to be-little or pick on anyone who does lead a similar lifestyle as the above mentioned. It's just not...us.)
Yes, yes, we do eat out - more often than we should. We take walks and go to the park. We go shopping, also more than we should. But my point is - we are the "lived in" kind of people. Not pristine.
SO, based on this my home will never be magazine cover quality. And, I'm learning to be OK with that. We are a FAMILY. We love our home. We love our things and we're bargain hunters - with that comes storage issues! We enjoy kids, and people with kids. We like getting wet/muddy in our own backyard and bringing a bit of it inside.
I don't want my children growing up with a false sense of their mother's perfection, nor do I want them thinking that they have to be perfect (or have to pretend that they are.) Instead, may my house be filled with LOVE, GRACE, TRUTH and above all CHRIST.
