Facing Facts

The most given advice to me as a mother is to learn to let things go. Don't worry about your house being messy. You can't do it all.

But the only thing I hate more than cleaning? A messy house.

Ok, ok. I get it. I have three kids, five and under. My house is not going to be pristine. Yet I still find myself stuffing down a small panic attack each time I wake up and see the disaster that is my home. I JUST cleaned! I scream in my head. Seriously. How does one function in this kind of chaos? In fact while writing this I had to get up 3 times to stop my two sons from flooding our house. I told them they could play with their water guns outside. So they stood outside and shot the water into the house. "We're shooting the ants!" They say with this sweet enthusiasm that makes it hard to be mad. (Well, not that hard).

I work really hard to keep my house clean, and it's still a health hazard about 95% of the time. Kids are messy. And gross. Right now I have one child in diapers--she's three-months old and solely breast fed, AKA 'Blowoutville'. One potty training, who has decided his new thing is wetting his pants on purpose (simply hilarious). And another still perfecting his butt wiping skills. So yeah, despite my obsession with clorox wipes and hand washing, sanitation levels are not where I'd like to see them.

So what's the moral of the story? Have I learned to call my home "lived in" instead of "messy?" Am I putting aside my desire for cleanliness in order to cherish these years of adolescent chaos? Have I risen above my petty need for organization and sanitation? Um. No, not really. I still run around like a slightly deranged version of Mr. Clean, repeating #cantstopwontstop over and over in my head, screaming obscenities under my breath, and raising my bleached hands to the skies crying, "Why God?! Whyyyy?!"

But no matter my efforts, my tears, my hashtags... chaos prevails. So I'm simply praying for grace, ya'll. Grace to survive these years of poop, never ending urine saturated laundry, and anything but organized living. May the force be with me.