As a mother, we often have to give our children the room to fail. To have a shortcoming and be ok with not being perfect at everything. As a Christian, I call it granting grace to my children. I do it when they can't clean up messes by themselves, or when they need extra help with something. But, we rarely extend this grace to ourselves.
I am not a housewife at heart. Cleaning and meal plans are not second nature to me. I often beat myself up about thid. I SHOULD keep a tidy house effortlessly, and be able to whip up a month worth of yummy freezer foods in 30 minutes and bake bread from scratch twice daily. I mean, any good housewife can, right?
But the thing I am the worst at? Clothes management. I don't save clothes for the younger kids as the older ones outgrow them. I am saving a few things for Reese since she is so close in size to Anna-Lee now, but as a rule I don't save clothes by size and season. We just buy clothes from the thrift store and sales and consignment places as needed. I spend around $2-400 a year on clothes for all 5 of us. Hubby and I of course keep clothes since we don't have growth spurts to worry about!
I've decided to grant myself some grace in this area. Its ok to not save and store every article of clothes in case we can use it again down the road. By donating it, I'm passing it on to another thrifty mama for her little ones. I'm letting myself stay sane, save space (we have no room to store totes of clothes even if I were so inclined), and I remind myself that its ok to not be perfect. Now, I've got 30 minutes and 25 meals to cook if you'll excuse me.
Where can you stand to give yourself a little grace? Maybe you beat yourself up about sleep issues with your baby. Its ok to have a crappy sleeper. Eventually they outgrow it, or are old enough that a doctor will listen and help. Maybe your body doesn't want to let go of those last few pregnancy pounds...curves are HOT! Be gentle with yourselves, and extend the grace we as mothers give to everyone else to yourself once in a while. You'll be glad you did.
Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Ch-ch-ch-changes...
I got fired last week. Not necessarily fired, but I no longer have a job. There weren't enoug hours for all of the employees. A sign of the times, I guess.
You would think that would make things easier at home. I only have home, family, and school to worry about now. You would most definitely be wrong. Our house has had me so stressed that I've come to the brink of losing it more than once. The amount of clutter and mess was overwhelming. And I'm working myself to the bone to change that. I worked for 2.5 hours last night before having a guest over to get the house presentable. And, I thought it was still a little messy, but it was definitely presentable. Only to have my guest tell me how much I needed to clean my house. A hard blow to take. Which had me fighting tears and a panic attack the rest of the night. It also sparked a nice fight with my husband about the state of our home. None of which was helping it get any more clean. I stayed up until 4 AM cleaning our bedroom. And now I've been up since 7:30 AM cleaning again. My husband helped me a bit this morning when he got home from work before heading to bed. It's not going to get all done today, but we're definitely on our way to having it nice and clean.
I'm diligently getting rid of items. While I would love to take the time to freecycle everything, that's just not possible right now. I've bagged the clothes for the clothing recycling center, but unfortunately everything else is being trashed. I absolutely believe in protecting our planet and being a good steward of the Eart, but right now my sanity has to come before that. I can't keep things around even for just a couple of extra days! Seeing the number of things in our house steadily decreasing is thrilling! My ultimate goal is a warm minimalist home. A minimalist home with more photos and personal momentos.
My biggest dilemma is the TV. I hate it! We have a flatscreen on the wall. I rarely watch TV. I watch maybe 4 hours a week and at least 3 of those hour its just on for noise. I let my oldest watch maybe an hour a day on average. I try to keep it off as much as I can. So when its off there's just a huge black rectangle on the wall. I could buy one of the "fishtank" dvds, and I even think I have a fireplace one around here somewhere. LOL But that's such an energy waste! I've thought about sewing up a cover for the TV from a beautiful fabric. A sort of fitted sheet-like thing to turn our TV into a piece of fabric art when not in use. I've also considered putting a small piece of black velcro on the corners of the TV and having one of my favorite pictures blown up to the appropriate size and mounted on cardboard that can be velcroed over the TV. I like this on most of all, since there are a few prints I've seen that I wished I could hang in place of the TV. Getting rid of the TV isn't an option, as DH is going nuts as it is without cable.
I wish I could have someone come into the house and just help me with a fresh set of eyes figure out what to keep and what to get rid of. Help me organize and sort things. Help me get things in order. I don't have the money to hire anyone, though. And I almost feel like I've made this mess and it's my responsibility to fix it. But when it is so overwhelming you just feel like it easier to give in.
You would think that would make things easier at home. I only have home, family, and school to worry about now. You would most definitely be wrong. Our house has had me so stressed that I've come to the brink of losing it more than once. The amount of clutter and mess was overwhelming. And I'm working myself to the bone to change that. I worked for 2.5 hours last night before having a guest over to get the house presentable. And, I thought it was still a little messy, but it was definitely presentable. Only to have my guest tell me how much I needed to clean my house. A hard blow to take. Which had me fighting tears and a panic attack the rest of the night. It also sparked a nice fight with my husband about the state of our home. None of which was helping it get any more clean. I stayed up until 4 AM cleaning our bedroom. And now I've been up since 7:30 AM cleaning again. My husband helped me a bit this morning when he got home from work before heading to bed. It's not going to get all done today, but we're definitely on our way to having it nice and clean.
I'm diligently getting rid of items. While I would love to take the time to freecycle everything, that's just not possible right now. I've bagged the clothes for the clothing recycling center, but unfortunately everything else is being trashed. I absolutely believe in protecting our planet and being a good steward of the Eart, but right now my sanity has to come before that. I can't keep things around even for just a couple of extra days! Seeing the number of things in our house steadily decreasing is thrilling! My ultimate goal is a warm minimalist home. A minimalist home with more photos and personal momentos.
My biggest dilemma is the TV. I hate it! We have a flatscreen on the wall. I rarely watch TV. I watch maybe 4 hours a week and at least 3 of those hour its just on for noise. I let my oldest watch maybe an hour a day on average. I try to keep it off as much as I can. So when its off there's just a huge black rectangle on the wall. I could buy one of the "fishtank" dvds, and I even think I have a fireplace one around here somewhere. LOL But that's such an energy waste! I've thought about sewing up a cover for the TV from a beautiful fabric. A sort of fitted sheet-like thing to turn our TV into a piece of fabric art when not in use. I've also considered putting a small piece of black velcro on the corners of the TV and having one of my favorite pictures blown up to the appropriate size and mounted on cardboard that can be velcroed over the TV. I like this on most of all, since there are a few prints I've seen that I wished I could hang in place of the TV. Getting rid of the TV isn't an option, as DH is going nuts as it is without cable.
I wish I could have someone come into the house and just help me with a fresh set of eyes figure out what to keep and what to get rid of. Help me organize and sort things. Help me get things in order. I don't have the money to hire anyone, though. And I almost feel like I've made this mess and it's my responsibility to fix it. But when it is so overwhelming you just feel like it easier to give in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)