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What I'd Tell a Younger Me About a Messy House {Episode 166}
811 Plays3 years ago
As experienced moms, we have LOTS of things we wish we could tell our younger selves, and how to feel better about having a messy house is at the top of the list!
In short, it's not only OK to have a messy house while kids are home, it's basically supposed too be messy (unless you spend most of your life cleaning, which we do not!). Don't miss the episode listed below for more tips on nailing successful motherhood and letting go of unhelpful expectations.
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Transcript
Introduction: Parenting with Humor and Chaos
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Advice to Younger Selves: Embracing Messy Homes
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello friends, welcome back to another episode. Today we are doing another segment in our series on what I would tell a younger me, which we just love to talk about because our poor younger selves, they were just doing the best, they knew how. And we're sharing these thoughts in hopes that it will help some of you who are a little bit earlier on your path of motherhood, just relax a little bit and know that you are doing an amazing job. So today we are addressing the ever present frustration of having a messy house.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yes. And we're, in this series, we're trying not to be and say things that would have annoyed us when we were our younger selves. Like we don't want to make ourselves, like our younger selves slap us. You'll miss it. As if you're going to miss a messy house, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Not super helpful. Even though you might get there, you might get to the point where you miss having little socks strewn about everywhere, but that's not helpful while you're in the middle of it. We're going to give you some helpful tips. I don't know that I'll ever miss dirty underwear on the floor.
00:01:30
Speaker
Never that. So speaking of messy houses, yesterday we had some company, we had some overnight company and I was working very hard to, you know, keep the house, the mess, contained in progress as it happened. And so finally I was like finally getting to sit down at a meal after a meal. We were kind of just finally getting a moment to breathe and discuss and I was like the house is kind of, you know, clean and
00:01:56
Speaker
Then my half-naked two-year-old toddles into the room and says, Mom, I need your help.
Core Sections: Prevention, Purpose, and Peace
00:02:07
Speaker
And here the toilet was overflowing. And into the kitchen, the toilet, the bath, right off the bathroom. And he'd had, so I just like, you know, in preparation for overnight company, went and got a couple little, you know, different things like
00:02:19
Speaker
a new toilet paper holder that stands on the floor. And apparently he was really attracted to it and found it really fun just to reel that toilet paper off of there and into the toilet. And it was very fun. And then, yeah. So here I am on my hands and knees with the company and my half naked dollar running amok and trying to get the
00:02:41
Speaker
The toilet mess stopped up and from going in the kitchen too far. Yeah, good times. It's up. A little stinker. And they're just so cute. And yet.
00:02:51
Speaker
poop running all over your floor or toilet water just in general, less cute. Oh, good times. Yeah, kids just, this is a surprise to exactly no one, but kids are very messy, right? They just leave stuff everywhere. So we are going to address that today. But to start off to just say and remind you, it is completely normal. It's just like, are you familiar with the book Everyone Poops, Audrey?
00:03:16
Speaker
It's a great one for potty trainers because it just reminds everybody this is totally normal as they're learning how to do this weird function on the toilet. It's totally normal and just like everyone has to go number two, everyone who has children has messes. Some of us hide it better than others and that may or may not be a good thing. We're going to talk about that, but we're just going to offer a little bit of hope in case you are just going nesso with the mess.
00:03:40
Speaker
All right, so we're dividing this episode into three parts. Prevention, how to stop the mess before it starts. And purpose, so why, what's the purpose of your house and the why behind the mess and maybe even the why behind why you want a clean house or want it cleaner. And then peace, so accepting your life the way it is and loving it.
Gratitude and Acceptance of Mess
00:04:03
Speaker
Or at least making peace with the mess while it's in progress.
00:04:07
Speaker
Right, right. I think that our homes are so important to us, especially as women, as moms. We like to think that it reflects on who we are as a person or as a mother, when really it just reflects on how often we make our children clean up their messes, right? Really doesn't reflect anything on us personally. But it helps to break things down and try to understand where the mess is coming from and what it does mean, right? And so we kind of broke it down into this simple phrase.
00:04:36
Speaker
A mess happens when someone has used some thing and left it somewhere.
Sources of Mess and Practical Solutions
00:04:42
Speaker
So in order to fix it, we got to address one or multiple of those things. Right, right. So first off, we just start with gratitude. Let's be thankful. One, we have a house, right? We talk a lot on this podcast about starting with believable statements. So I'm thankful I have a house. That's a good place to start, right? And then number two, we have people in it that we love. And
00:05:06
Speaker
And yes, that's you like stop there, not what they're doing with the house, but there are people, there are other people in the house that are not alone and we're thankful for them. And then number three, another thing we can regret grateful for is, um, and a believable statement is that we have lives.
00:05:23
Speaker
blessed lives that let us purchase and use wonderful things. So we, we are very blessed. So those are three gratitude. I love starting with gratitude. Thankfulness is a good place to start. And those are really three super believable statements that when we start from the position of gratitude, then we're putting ourselves in the proper place mentally to then, then we're in a good place to deal with the mess. Good thoughts.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. You know, anytime I have a struggle with a person in my life, I have to go back to that gratitude because it's so easy to get irritated at the things that they do when you kind of gloss over the fact that they exist, right? Like, oh, my husband drives me so crazy. But I have this wonderful husband who sometimes drives me crazy. Totally normal. You know, I have this wonderful child who leaves messes everywhere he goes. He is such a beautiful soul. I'm so grateful for him, right? Great place to start. I love that.
00:06:15
Speaker
And so going back to these three things that we can address, in order to avoid the mess, we either have to address the person making the mess, which in all honesty is sometimes us, right? We know that. Or the thing that they're leaving out, or multiple things, or where they're leaving it, right? Address one or multiple of those things.
00:06:33
Speaker
considering the fact that we probably won't be getting rid of the people that are leaving the mess, right? We're probably just not going to sell the husband or the kids and it's probably time, but it might be time for some new training, right? So just addressing the person. Maybe it's just time for a new tour chart or to sit down and say, guys, has anyone noticed that we kind of are tripping over stuff all the time? How can we make that better? How does it feel when our house is picked up? What are your thoughts? Just kind of brainstorm a little bit. All right. So then when we've like gotten ourselves in a place where we're thankful for the people,
00:07:02
Speaker
then we can start addressing the things. Really that's the easiest to kind of, um, to, to deal with and manipulate into a better condition, maybe more trainable than the people. So, um, and we have some really good episodes about stuff and we've talked about this and we have two specific episodes targeted at systems and organization and planning. So we'll link those in our show notes cause those we dive really deep into stuff. But, um,
00:07:30
Speaker
The best place to start is just get rid of stuff. So a very common organizing house cleaning person uses a phrase, does it spark joy? So does it spark joy? If it's not like you are so unhappy that it is out, that you can't even find the joy.
00:07:49
Speaker
having it then it's not sparking joy anymore and and and that's a good place to start get rid of it donate it someone else can use it open yourself and your house up for other things and also I am so aware that when I get rid of physical clutter and
00:08:08
Speaker
I get rid of mental clutter. So as I said in our episode, I think it was with Chanel, that everything represents a decision. And what really is at the bottom of it for me is decision fatigue. So I have so much freer mental space when I have less physical stuff.
Flexibility and Organization in Home Spaces
00:08:26
Speaker
Yes, another phrase that I love I was taught this as a child was everything you own owns a piece of you, which is really alarming to think about every time you buy a new top, then it requires some time to wash and to hang
00:08:41
Speaker
and maybe to iron and even to just decide whether you want to wear that or not. So every little thing that we own is going to take away a piece of who we are. And sometimes it gives more than it takes, right? Like my children's socks, for example, don't particularly spark joy, but they give enough to my life. They make my children safe and comfortable, warm and comfortable, I guess not really safe, but anyway, enough so that I keep them in my life, right? So you have to just make that decision. Does this thing give back more than it takes?
00:09:11
Speaker
And am I willing to give away a little piece of myself in order to keep this thing around? Maybe not, right? Love that. So finally, we can address the issue of where. So if things are being left out, it might be just that there's not really a home for them, right? Is there a place for everything and everything in its place? Maybe not. I struggle with that sometimes. Everyone's home layout is so different. And as your family grows and changes, you will have slightly different needs from your home than maybe five years ago. So it's this constant
00:09:41
Speaker
addressing of the needs and how your house can fulfill that and maybe moving things around, changing things a little bit. An example that we just went through this week was we have a dedicated school room for our kids to be homeschooled in. It's just an easy place to keep all our books and supplies.
00:09:56
Speaker
and a big table but it was also where we were storing toys and it got to be so chaotic because the little ones would be playing while the big ones were doing school and it was just not working out and so we decided to dedicate another room that had a different purpose for just toys and it was a little bit hard for me because I'd already wrapped my head around it being this music room that we were gonna do but it just didn't work out for our current phase of life so moving that over all of a sudden meant that there was this
00:10:19
Speaker
much better dedicated place for these toys that tended to end up all over the home or underfoot while we were trying to do serious schoolwork. So just be flexible, right? Be willing to change things up if necessary to best suit your stage of life right now. Oh, I love that. That's awesome. We just went through a little bit of reorganization too. And one thing was I attacked the kitchen and there was a problem like where we were keeping the cups. And so I actually, I'll link it in the show notes, I actually got
00:10:49
Speaker
from magnolia i got oh i think it's called cups for days and you just hang the cups all up on the wall and it's just a so much a better solution for us right now than the other solution that we sort of kind of had it just wasn't working anymore but what i love to see is when when you make a change organizationally
00:11:07
Speaker
you really can see the mental effect that it has on kids. Like adults were like, oh my goodness, I just went over here for a cup and now the cups are over here. And this is like, you know, we're like drudgery and kids are like, mom, look, everybody who comes in the house, look, the cups are over here on the wall now. And it's like the most exciting thing ever. And all you did was like move the cups like two feet.
00:11:30
Speaker
And you can really see the mental effect that it has on kids. Audrey, I think you've been spying on us this week, because every time we move something over to this room, my kids are like, best day ever. The dollhouse is here now.
Emotional Significance of Home
00:11:43
Speaker
It's going to be so great. We can play right here. This is magical. It's really fun to see them adjust. And sometimes there's a little bit of kickback, honestly. Sometimes we rearrange kids' rooms, and they don't like that. Like, oh, I didn't want to share with this person, or I didn't want to put my stuff here.
00:11:57
Speaker
But you do the best you can for the space you have and hopefully you can get more enthusiasm than pushback.
00:12:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mentioned it several times, and I'm going to find it and link it for the show notes of this episode. But there is an article that Joanna Gaines wrote about her transition from kind of almost cleaning up as her kids were playing with stuff to realizing that everything needed a place and making a dedicated place where the kids could have their own thing and make their own mess. Yes, yes. That's definitely something I would tell a younger me. Stop cleaning up as they're playing.
00:12:35
Speaker
just let them make the darn mess and come back later. It's not worth it. Yes. One thing I was thinking of what I would tell a younger me about this is I used to be so animated about the condition of my kids' bedrooms. And that was like a lot of stress to me because I wanted them to keep their bedrooms up to my standard. And then later in life, I have transitioned to
00:12:58
Speaker
like their bedroom is their place to practice their homekeeping. And so I kind of step out, I can shut the door and walk past without seeing the mess. And I think it would have been better both for them and for me, the younger me, not to be stressed in so much about the condition of their bedroom, but let
00:13:17
Speaker
that play the place where they get to build their own home, homekeeping skills. Yes, that's a beautiful thought. I mean, barring significant health hazards. I do go in there occasionally and make sure no one's left a ham sandwich under the bed. I know. But yes, it's and for children who share bedrooms, that's a real life skill to learn how to cooperate in keeping a space clean. I mean, I don't think I really learned that until college. I was there with so much friction, like, oh, you leave your stuff out and you never take out the garbage.
00:13:44
Speaker
I was actually the person they were saying that about. But to learn that skill early on, that's beautiful, right? And they're not going to get it right for a long time. And that's okay. And maybe their level of okay is way below your level of okay.
00:13:58
Speaker
And you might just have to learn to be okay with that. Yeah. Okay. Purpose. We're going to move on to the second part is what is the purpose of our house and why, why is the mess there? So if we stop and we go all the way back to the moment about what drew us to our home, is it the layout? Is it the neighborhood? Is it the aesthetic? Is it the feel? Um, can, you know,
00:14:22
Speaker
potential for family parties, get togethers, game nights, tackle fights, what? What is the emotion behind your home? Like why did you originally choose your home? And even thinking about this back to when we spent a lot of the years in our younger parenting years renting, we hadn't bought a home yet. So maybe not like our ideal forever home, but just thinking about what was it about those things that added the emotion or the home
00:15:08
Speaker
Whatever, things have changed, your needs have changed, and you're starting to feel a little bit irritated with your space, right? To go back to that initial feeling. This is funny because every April is the time that I'm the most grateful for my house because we saw the property in April. We walked through in April, and it's just a beautiful time of season here in Arizona.
00:15:13
Speaker
part of home to it for us.
00:15:27
Speaker
Everything is in bloom. It's just mildly warm. The heat hasn't hit, but it's not cold at all. It's just gorgeous. So every time April rolls around, I'm like, oh, I have all this outpouring of gratitude for my home because that's when I fell in love with it, right? So maybe you can channel some of those thoughts back in so that we can stop getting so caught up in everything that's wrong, right? Especially when we start looking at the mess and, oh, I was going to do that one thing to decorate that one wall and I never did. And, oh, look how awful it looks. You know, just that rabbit hole is not good.
00:15:55
Speaker
In the end, we need to remember that a home is a couple of things, right? It's a shelter for the people we love. Super crucial, like you die without shelter. And it's a place where our memories are stored. Okay, stored in our brain, but where they're created. And that's why leaving a home, moving, or going back to visit an old home is so emotional because it brings back this flood of memories and special times you have with your family. And what a privilege that you're giving this space to house
00:16:25
Speaker
your family's memory. You know, you just have to think about that a little bit more emotional side of things so they're not so irritated. Yes. That is such a good example about thinking about going back to your childhood home or a home, you know, previous home and what emotions does it invoke? And then like extrapolate that forward. What emotion do you want your kids to have when they come back to their childhood family home? Maybe it can spur you to like write a purposeful statement or a theme or a
00:16:52
Speaker
motto for your home. Hang it where you can see it. Hang it where everybody can see it. And then instead of being consistently critical of your home, you can just focus on that statement and you all can focus on that statement. I know going back to the rental homes that we lived in, I did have to learn not to be
00:17:12
Speaker
focusing on the things that I couldn't control about those homes. Cause there's a lot you can't do with a rental home. And maybe I've gone overboard in our home that we, you know, that we have owned because I can, I'm in control and I can make changes.
Purpose-Driven Home Care
00:17:27
Speaker
Hey, this wall, take it down, you know, or whatever. Oh, but, but just learning my younger self learning to not focus on the things I couldn't control, but the atmosphere,
00:17:40
Speaker
feeling, the aesthetic, the love, the emotions being generated in the home. That is definitely something we can and should control. Right. Isn't that the moral of life, right? Is to focus on the things that you can control and on the purpose instead of the circumstances all the time, right? Because we're all irritated by our circumstances. There's all kinds of things we can't change that we could focus on and just be angry about all the time.
00:18:05
Speaker
So we came up with a couple different purpose-driven statements that we want to just suggest to you guys. And again, this isn't meant to add stress. You don't have to write this up in a big, pretty poster and put it on your wall. But just think about it and maybe come up with one on your own so you know what the purpose of your home is. One is, my home is a safe and pleasant place where my children learn, laugh, and love. Isn't that beautiful? Safe and pleasant.
00:18:30
Speaker
We didn't say, we didn't say pristine. We didn't say perfectly decorated. Right. Or also clean. We didn't even say clean. That's right. Right. Just pleasant. Another one is our home is a haven from evil and harm where our family grows in peace and friendship. Right. Think about those really essential characteristics of your home and your family that you want to keep.
00:18:52
Speaker
and grab on too tight and let go of the rest. And maybe having a clean home is really important to you, but what exactly does that look like? Does it just look like stuff picked up off the floor? What's a realistic expectation that you could incorporate then? We have a pleasant and tidy home. I like the word tidy. That seems like things are relatively put away, but baseboards might not be washed. Give yourself a little bit of grace there.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah. You know, one thought I was struggling with a while back was, um, I was looking at my messy house and I was having this thought, I don't want my kids to think that I am okay. Like mom was okay with this level of a messy house. Like I don't want them to, when they're making their own homes think like, eh, well, you know, mom standard, it was pretty low. And so, but I want them, I want them
00:19:42
Speaker
Instead of focusing on what they may or may not think about the cleanliness level of the house, I think it would be better for me to focus on what they feel, what home is, what it means to them.
00:19:57
Speaker
that be something that they would want to replicate in their own homes because you know the cleanliness level they may or may not be okay with or want to replicate or or maybe marry a spouse who has a different standard or level of clean you know that that'll all come into play but definitely i think that a home that's safe pleasant
00:20:17
Speaker
You know, free from evil, harm, haven, those kind of things are definitely something that we can inspire our children to replicate in their own homes. I'm really glad you brought up the feelings because I like to think of my threshold of cleanliness as kind of like a bell
Cleaning for Satisfaction, Not Obligation
00:20:33
Speaker
curve, right? Like when it's really messy, I am so angry.
00:20:37
Speaker
And also, when it's really clean, I'm angry because I've had to yell for like half an hour to get everybody, let's be honest, a couple hours to get everybody cleaning. Whereas I think the perfect compromise is somewhere in the middle, maybe about 80% clean, where I'm like maximum happiness potential without forcing us to all
00:20:59
Speaker
get super duper scrubby clean. Does that make sense? Right? If I just work to this point of my bell curve, then I can maximize my happiness and everyone else's because you know everyone's happier when the house is relatively picked up without going so crazy that then the feelings are altered in my home. Right? Could I have a pristine house? Sure. And everyone would hate me.
00:21:19
Speaker
because we would all be walking around doing mom's bidding all every second of every day. Don't put that there. Don't put that there. And that is not how I choose to live. That's not the feeling I want to maintain in my home. And so you get to decide what your threshold is and where you can match up your maximum happiness with just the perfect threshold of cleanliness. Hope that makes sense. Yes. Yes. I definitely, I'm kind of going off script here, but I spent two days last week deep cleaning.
00:21:46
Speaker
And my thought going into it was, I'm doing this for me because I don't like this. And so I just spent two days just, I didn't ask anybody to help me. I didn't require anybody to scrub baseboards along with me. I was just having this. Afterwards, I was calling it my, referring to it as my cleaning rampage.
00:22:08
Speaker
Mom's on the rampage. Don't bug her. Don't talk to her. She's going to ask you to help. Oh, but going into, I went into it with the thought is like, I'm doing this for me. Like I didn't have the thought I'm doing this for my kids and they should be grateful. And you know, like they should try to keep it clean after this. It was just like, I'm just doing this for me. I know that I'm the one that needs this cleaned, this floor mopped. My kids don't care. In fact, probably, you know, they'll
00:22:33
Speaker
track mud on it again before it's even dry. But this is for me. It's going to make me feel better. And I think that was something maybe I could have
00:22:41
Speaker
whispered in my younger self's ear is do it for you. So then when I'm doing it for me, I'm not focused on my kid's lack of gratitude or lack of help or anything. And I'm more focused on like, I want to feel good about cleaning. So I'm not going to be yelling at kids to be helping me clean because that's not going to make me feel good about being clean afterwards. And you know what happened, interestingly enough, was
00:23:06
Speaker
A couple of my kids wondered in and they're like, oh, cool mom, what can I do? And so I was like, you know what, the top of the refrigerator hasn't been touched for about six months. You want to, you want to tackle it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet you can join my cleaning room page.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so much healthier than running around going, oh, these dirty rotten kids are like, oh, socks here and half eaten apple here.
Teaching Children Responsibility for Belongings
00:23:29
Speaker
It's just, you're like Snow White whistling while you work and going about your day. Your kerchief tied around your head. So much more puzzle. Oh, all right. Now let's think about the purpose of our things. Most of us can probably admit we own way too many things, too much stuff.
00:23:46
Speaker
But there is a lot that improves our way of life. So like we don't have to have, I think when I walk down that aisle at Walmart that has that, what is it called? That as seen on TV. So I don't have a television. So it's very interesting for me to walk down that aisle because I played this little game like I've never seen this before.
00:24:12
Speaker
So here is a bunch of stuff that I didn't know I needed. And guess what? I still don't need it just because I've seen it. It's just my little way of finding a happy medium between too much stuff and not enough. Or, you know, back in the dark age of scrubbing things on my hands and knees because the mop hadn't been invented yet or something.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yes, here I want to go back to gratitude and appreciation, right? We have these incredible inventions that make our lives so much better than like the dark ages, as you say, or even just 100 years ago. We have computer mouses.
00:24:55
Speaker
mice whatever we have ballpoint pens we have socks foot gloves if you listen to our episode with Chanel we have amazing incredible clothes that fit our bodies like so many amazing things and yet um
00:25:11
Speaker
Sometimes it gets to be too much, right? So you can start there. You can start from gratitude. Oh my goodness. I'm so grateful that I have this cute little baby onesie that ended up balled up in the corner of the house. Look how cute my baby is. I'm going to miss this someday. Throw it in the wash, right? To go about doing these things out of gratitude. My kids love to make their
00:25:29
Speaker
paper messes they get out scissors and just cut little stuff everywhere and there's just paper scraps everywhere and it used to just drive me crazy and I'm like I love that my children choose to sit and make a paper craft instead of staring at a screen or fighting or whatever else and it doesn't mean that it's necessarily fun to clean up but I can I can approach it more from this attitude of gratitude.
00:25:49
Speaker
and that it all has a purpose, right? If the purposes start to seem a little redundant, like you have too many things for one purpose or, you know, okay, your kids actually don't use craft supplies and you have a whole closet full, then maybe it's time to purge. Right, right. One thing I was thinking here that I wish I would have told my younger self is give your children permission, authority, and responsibility to throw things away and get rid of things. When mom is the only person who can make the
00:26:19
Speaker
ultimate decision that, you know, this toy is broken, it needs to be thrown away. Oh my goodness. Because that again is going back to decision fatigue. It's so many decisions you have to make. When, if a kid can just, you know, pick up a light bulb or in our house, it's batteries. If you take a battery out for heaven's sakes, get rid of it. If it's not working, just give them the authority, the permission, the responsibility of throwing things away. Your toy is broken.
00:26:46
Speaker
Oh, that's too bad. Throw it away. Please don't make me pick it up from under the couch in three months and throw it away for you. It doesn't have a leg. It doesn't have a wheel. You can't use it. Right. One side note about this is if you're struggling with this, a child that doesn't like to let go, we've found a lot of success in giving them containers to fit their things.
00:27:07
Speaker
You have this box for your toys, craft supplies, dolls, whatever it is that seems to overrun everything. When it doesn't fit, you get rid of it. So we've done those with finished craft projects, actually. Everybody wants to keep all their paintings and all their clay creations and everything. It's like, well, this is the little teeny box you get. If it doesn't fit, you get to go through and pull out something that you're maybe less proud of and get rid of that. That is such an empowering thing you can give your children, the capacity to
00:27:35
Speaker
evaluate between possessions and decide what is no longer serving them and what can get passed on. And then they don't become hoarders.
Finding Peace with a Messy Home
00:27:42
Speaker
Hopefully. Alright, and the final step is peace. How can we be more at peace with our messy houses? So, because there is going to be a mess.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I would tell a younger me, not that you're gonna miss it someday, but it is going to be over someday. Yeah, just that concept I think can be really huge. Sometimes I go to my mom's house who, you know, no one lives there except my mom and no little kids and no toddlers making messes until we come over, of course. And I walk in as soon as I just think, oh, it'd be so nice if my house always looked like this. And then I like to remind myself, but it does almost look like this.
00:28:23
Speaker
And she gets great joy in seeing the kids come over and play with old toys and bring noise. And it is a great thing to remember. But if it's bringing you stress to remember that, then don't worry about that. So it's also important to remember that there are a handful of times when your house will be messier than others. So you can ask yourself if any of these apply to you. It's kind of like a survival time for a messy house. And it's time to just chill a little bit, right? Things like you have children under the age of six.
00:28:52
Speaker
That is going to be a messy phase. And I know it sounds like it's going to take forever because, you know, Audrey and I have been in that phase for like 20 years, but it won't last forever. It won't. So kids under six means your house is going to be messier than many people. If you don't have any older helpers, and I'm talking like 12 and up. Yeah, kids eight, nine, 10 can help as well. But the teenagers are the ones that can really be helpful. And if they're not around or all of a sudden you have them, but they're busy with work in school, then
00:29:18
Speaker
you also might see an increase in mess, right? Maybe you're a solo parent, maybe full-time, maybe just part-time, your husband travels a lot. That is going to see an increase of mess as well. Or you have a job, or you're just extra busy, you're helping with a community service thing or something, or any other of those survival times that we talk about, a move, lots of traveling, a new baby, any of those things, a sickness, illness, somebody's in the hospital, just expect life to get a little bit crazier, a little bit messier, totally normal.
00:29:45
Speaker
Yes. And that's where the peace comes from, is letting it go. So if you're in one of those times, how can you let it go? How can you take the pressure off so that you can feel more of that peace and less of just the weight of the mess? Can your husband help you? If he doesn't like to clean or doesn't care if it's clean, can he take the kids in the evening so you can clean? Can you pay some cleaners? Can you hire a neighborhood teen to come help clean or take care of kids so you can clean?
00:30:13
Speaker
Can the kids spend more time outside? So you can keep things tidier inside. One thing that I've done is the four o'clock afternoon short time that really did save my sanity. So that I knew that, yes, it's a mess. Absolutely, it is a mess. And at four o'clock, there is going to be a time when we're all gonna pitch in, we're all gonna make it clean again. So where can you find that piece?
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, as a homeschooler, that's especially important. Or if you're a public schooler whose kids are home in the summer, right? You got three months of extra messes. How are you going to carve out a way for you to find your sanity? And even if you don't have the means to hire someone to help, what about just swapping play dates, right? You call up a friend and say, hey, can I send my kids over for two hours while I scrub this floor because it's so gross? And then you send yours over. I'll keep them outside, of course, because now my house is clean. And you could do the same to yours, you know, or swap days. There's a lot of options if you get creative, right?
00:31:13
Speaker
Or my other alternative is maybe the only shift you need to make is a mental one. Maybe you are giving yourself such a hard time because in your mind, things are not as they should be. This is too messy. This is too chaotic. There's too much stuff. It's just gross. What kind of thoughts are you saying to yourself about your messy house? And sometimes this is a real shift if you haven't started listening to your thoughts in the past, but you can make minor shifts. So for example, this is so gross. I like to tell myself that a lot. I walk into the bathroom.
00:31:43
Speaker
This is so gross, the bathroom that only the kids use, right? Oh, what are you thinking? Maybe I can switch that to, oh, it's normal. The kids leave chewed up gum on the floor and dirty underwear and, you know, someone spilled their cup and this is normal. This is what kids do, right? Or no one helps out around here to, oh, it's time to revamp our family chore chart because it looks like kids are forgetting their responsibilities.
00:32:08
Speaker
Um, or I hate crafts cause they're so messy. These are all thoughts that have come out of my head in case you think of being judgmental to something like, I love that my kids play so creatively. I'm going to give them another 20 minutes and then we'll clean up so that I don't have to look at this all day long. Right? Just these minor shifts that help you get to a place of peace and acceptance of your wonderful life while also making progress to get to a place that's a little bit less stressful.
00:32:33
Speaker
yes yes those are good shift and replacement thoughts to use we did want to say that you need to be watchful for thoughts that are um like destructive like it shouldn't be this way or something is wrong with me or my kids um if if you have kids it's normal that there's a mess it really is everything's just exactly happening if you have a mess it's
00:32:57
Speaker
That's the way it's supposed to be. And so maybe go back to those thoughts that we shared at the beginning, but more believable thoughts. I have a house, I have a family, and start there, but watch out for those, like those destructive thoughts that make you like wanting to get rid of the people instead of the stuff. Like that, that is something just to be cautious of. Yes, love that, totally.
00:33:21
Speaker
And then finally, we suggest, like I kind of mentioned before, determining a tolerance level. And this is probably best done with your spouse.
00:33:29
Speaker
with you or your kids involved as well and just say, guys, we've noticed that we love the way our house feels when it's clean, right? And it's a little bit harder when there's stuff on the floor. Maybe we can get to a place where we determine that it's an appropriate level of clean. If it falls below this, that we do a quick pickup, right? And this is a little bit hard to determine because it's not, you know, like, well, when the mess reaches three feet high, we start cleaning it up.
00:33:52
Speaker
Waste level, too much. Waste level, start getting rid of something. But sometimes it's just kind of you're eyeballing it or you notice your own stress level raising. So I personally have thought about this a lot and I've noticed that for us, if the house gets to a point where it's longer than 15 minutes to pick it up, right? So if if company was coming in 15 minutes, I said, everybody pick up now and we all ran and picked up and there was still mess, then that would be too messy.
00:34:15
Speaker
Right? So again, it's very subjective and it's kind of hard to define, but you probably already know, right? There's probably, it's probably okay to have like three or four dress-ups on the floor, but when the entire bin is dumped out, you're like, you know, or it's okay to have the Legos and the dolls out, but when the Legos and the dolls end up this and the, you know, and 15 types of toys are out, then it's too much. So just kind of determine that for yourself. Define it.
00:34:39
Speaker
communicate it to your family and say, doesn't that feel so much better when we keep it to this point? And then you just kind of have to watch for it. Like, uh-oh, we got three or four toys out. Let's pick them up until we only have one out. And then that's so much easier to maintain. Yeah, that is such a good baseline. 15 minutes from a clean house. Well, it's a great one for us because we live about 15 minutes away from town. So if someone is giving, hey, can I pop by? Yup. Yup.
00:35:06
Speaker
We've put in place a couple things that are kind of going back to like the first part that we're saying like the prevention but some hard and fast rules that we do so that like this is my tolerance level so like one thing that you were mentioning was one kind of toy out at a time.
00:35:27
Speaker
That is my tolerance level. I can handle one kind of toy all over the floor. I can't handle four. You can't have the Lincoln logs and the Barbies and the toy cars and the trains, just one. But you have to communicate to your kids. You can't just think that they know that you have another rule we have is no food upstairs. No food or shoes upstairs. So like if they don't know that, you can't enforce that rule. And then like I mentioned before,
00:35:57
Speaker
Um, just, we have an afternoon short time. So if you decide on like one or two times a day, everyone pitches in to get it back to your baseline level on like afternoon short time. And you know, we have an episode all about kids in chores where we really kind of dive into what specifically we expect for certain ages and how we help them learn that and do that. So you can go listen to that episode too. But just to get it back, like I said, that was just a really big stress release for me to know that.
00:36:27
Speaker
both after breakfast and at four o'clock in the afternoon, everything's going to be back to a state where I can breathe easy and the rest of the time I can let it go a little bit more. So working toward that piece. Yes, love that.
Redefining Parental Success Beyond Cleanliness
00:36:41
Speaker
Finally, we want to wrap up with this thought, you guys.
00:36:45
Speaker
The state of your house has nothing to do with your ability as a mother or your performance as a mother. We talk about this a lot and we've talked about it quite a bit in episode 160, talking about success as a mom. When we mix those two up, we run the risk of really getting down on ourselves because our purpose is to mother or father, if you happen to be one of our dads listening. Your purpose is to connect and create a relationship with your child. Now you also have to care for them, which involves
00:37:14
Speaker
shoes and socks and breakfast and all these household-related tasks. But when we get off that focus of mothering being a relationship and think that it means how clean our house is, then we're in some dangerous waters. Please remember that your children need you for you. They don't need you as a cleaning lady. That is a very nice way to say
00:37:44
Speaker
what I had to say to my younger self, which was, chill, babe. You can't control the mess, but you can control the way that you react and respond to the mess. And so that's what I would tell my younger self. Work on that second part of the control and just let go of the first one. Totally, totally. You guys got this. You're doing a great job. We'll talk to you guys next week.
00:38:12
Speaker
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