I just read this article over on BlogHer and it has resonated although for slightly different reasons than the author of that article. You see, my problem isn’t the expectation that I should be building a brand (although if Cadbury want to send me some chocolate then go for it!) but that I never anticipated being a “Mummy blogger”. I don’t feel that I have particularly new or interesting viewpoints on parenting – actually if I’m honest, I still have that flicker of doubt in my own parenting ability and thus I feel that blogging my day-to-day life would be of minimal value to readers – but this blog is stagnating while my crafting and baking is somewhat on hiatus.
It’s not that I don’t want to be creative – Lord knows I do – but I am just so busy right now. I genuinely don’t know how certain other blogging, homeschooling mothers-of-many manage without liberal applications of prozac, coffee and w(h)ine. So I’ve decided that since the important thing is to write, I shall do so even if it isn’t much to do with crafting or parenting. So today’s topic du choix is “Keeping up appearances“.
I found this photo in one of the many flickr groups I’m a member of:
and I was instantly drawn in to the clean, calm and serene aura given off. This is what I aspire to! A bit of nosying around helped me find that the photographer also writes a blog. I think it’s testament to her fabulous eye for photographs and beautiful subject matter that I’ve spent the last hour gazing at this blog despite it being written in Swedish. I could whinge and whine about my lack of photography talent, but I shan’t because if I put the effort in to learn how to use our fancy camera then I’d improve my own pictures greatly. Time, alas, is not my friend. So instead I shall whinge and whine about my messy house.
The reason I even found that photograph is because my bedroom is tidy and I was inspired to go rooting through flickr to look at other people’s home space. The tidy bedroom may not seem like a big deal to you Amanda Soule/Nigella Lawson types with the perfect houses (Manda McGrory I’m looking at you) but we have lived here for 3y8m and my house is the tidiest it has ever been. If I can just get the quail out of my hall and encourage my children to stop drawing on any wall they choose, I might be able to post similar pictures of my beautiful home.
Admission time:
1) It took two days of almost non-stop tidying supplemented with Season 5 of The West Wing, many cups of tea and cake to gain access to my desk.
2) The kids have watched a lot of TV this week.
3) After we kept buying socks because we had no clean pairs, I bullied Bob into sorting out our long-neglected sock mountain. About 80 pairs, we estimate.
4) We finally unpacked some boxes that we had abandoned since we moved here. Oops?
5) I convinced our supermarket delivery driver to leave the crates so that I could unpack them at my leisure. Whether it was sympathy (we had 12 crates of shopping!!) or fear (I think the kids were all naked when he arrived) he acquiesced and honestly these crates are the best storage ever. I have six in my bedroom now neatly organised with my craft supplies.
6) I’m seriously considering making slipcovers for the aforementioned half-inched delivery crates, partly because green doesn’t go with my room and partly because it’ll hide my guilt 
I honestly want to know how other parents manage it. I turned my back for two minutes yesterday and Nairn & Erica had the floor covered in bits from their “Decorate your own Easter bonnet” kits including various brightly coloured feathers, sequins and other toddler-oriented craft crap. We were 100% sure we’d hidden all the pens away from Erica only for her to have actually deliberately stashed some and used them to draw on the sofa AGAIN. Should I post a photograph of our reality? I think not, that is how to lose friends methinks. Tell me, friends: How do you do it?!
Please note, due to slow questionnaire returns the Little and Large swap sign-up has been extended and swap partners will be allocated ASAP!
This post was written by Vonnie on April 9, 2010
My carpet is constantly engrained with various colours of glitter. Ive not unpacked yet, The mess doesn’t phase me, i’d rather Rachel was happy being a kid than living in a “clean everything” type home.
Other than the glitter engrained dog/cat/carpet/boyfriend, we seem to live in semi choas. I can only dream of having a clean home.
O that so sounds like my house. I can’t turn my back for a second without my oldest deciding she is going to fiddle with something – usually something of mine!!
I think creative, tidy people are probably few and far between. My house is in a constant state of chaos but I know where everything is. I just wish I had ONE tidy room, but there are only so many hours in a day and so many exciting things to be getting on with!
I don’t even have kids and I find it difficult to keep my house clean/tidy/minimalist! Some weeks I manage, others it just gets left cos i’m fed up being the only person making the effort. Still, it is nice to have a tidy home that you can sit in and realise there’s nothing left to do but sit and relax for a while. I usually say to myself “i’ll give every room a blitz then I can….” enter luxury eg. eat a chocolate biscuit.
Great post. I’ve been thinking (well, angsting) about this a lot recently. There isn’t a single room in my house that I’d be happy to have photographed and posted on my blog. I don’t even have a single wall! Gets me down, but we just have too much stuff for our flat and like you said, as you tidy one room they’re trashing another. I definitely think you should make cosies for your boxes!
My home is my bugbear. Every single room is a tip. I spent 2 hours on my hands & knees on Wednesday scrubbing dog fur from half of our bedroom carpet. Can’t face the other half yet & have banned the dog from there, as he sleeps in it during the day.
I was at a Partylite candle party last week & loved the big expensive candle holders (ranging from £50 to over £100!!!) but thought the way forward to buy one is to host a party, as my friend actually made £183 from hers! £183!
Her home is immaculate though, even though she has 2 children like me, so that was just a big no no.
I used to upload photos to flickr most days, but have stopped taking photos at home as the piles of stuff in the background is beginning to embaress me.
I only have one, but it took me about 2 weeks of half hearted tidying and a week of really concentrated tidying to get the flat clean enough to my mind for the school to come and visit. That was in September, and it hasn’t been that clean since. I’m not expecting to be tidy unless we can move to a much bigger space with big big cupboards.
Hi!
Between having a Teenager, a craft addiction and being Guide/Senior Section Leader I can honestly say I’ve not seen vast areas of my house for months at a time.
Glitter, glue, badges, fabric, beads and various (some exciting, some not so) bits of “stuff” inhabit my home.
But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way! It’s my home!
Susi
x
Okay, confession, I clean like a mofo. Mess drives me insane, and my kids are that all over the place all the time I find I need the calm space to offset it. Sometimes it gets bit haywire, like now when we’re decorating, and I’m not fussed about whatever the kids have out to do, as long as it gets packed away at the end before something else comes out.
I have creative places to pack away the ironing pile and stuff like that, i’m not always on top of everything (far from it!) but at least I don’t have to *look* at it. And I still have the usual kid crap of them drawing on walls and things (which Juno just did on the freshly papered stairs, so help me lord).
I just find I can deal with all the chaos better if my surroundings are in order. You wouldn’t believe how snarky people are about it though. Although maybe you would, because apparently people are snarky about everything hmmf.
Thank goodness for a bit of honesty.
My house is a mountain of mess which I struggle to keep on top of.
I had to stop reading some blogs for a while as their perfect lives when I was post baby number 2 was going to send me into a depression.
Great blog post, I’m off now to tackle my sock pile which fills a whole washing basket.
Amanda.x.
Haha – you’re far more likely to be the norm than the more polished mommy bloggers. Remember that the photos many people post are part of building the brand. (And even Dooce mainly posts kid and dog pics!)
If you’re good at putting things back where they belong and cleaning like Bev that’s great – but if you’re not, you’re not.
Clean? er um doesn’t seem to happen successfully here. Two little boys and the big boy can’t seem to cope with seeing the carpets,something about fear of open spaces. The flotsam and jetsam of daily life constantly washes to the corners of each room, leaving a path from door to door. I have seriously considered getting a large shovel to aid domestic deliverance.I am a seasoned stasher and could probably hide an African elephant from my hubby under his nose (provided it kept quiet) so I do have problems getting rid of stuff, unfortunately we all do, to some degree hence the household clutter….a trip to the recycle centre is in order now the trailer is fixed!