The path through my domestic wilderness, Part 1

Continuing along with the theme of yesterday's blog~~mom being overwhelmed and her toxic mood at risk of infecting household~~it has become clear to me that a neat, clean home contributes a major factor to our happiness. School~~or maybe it's just life~~puts my home at risk of extreme clutter and me losing focus on assigning chores and keeping the wheels turning, so to speak.

Going into my marriage, I had the reputation of being a slob. It wasn't that I left food dripping from rafters or had gross habits, but I really did not care if my living space exploded with clutter. I was creative. And creative people know what their piles consist of and where they are.

It became clear that my husband and I had slightly different priorities about the state of the home. Alex valued a clutter-free environment (lucky him) but wasn't so picky about how recently the sink was cleaned. I cared a lot more about the deep cleaning but couldn't have cared less about the rest of it. Either way, I had no system in place to deal with all of this while also taking care of the kids and participating in the rest of life.

A few friends and I with mutual struggles formed a devotional group (spiritual study) dedicated to the subject. The group consisted of a few women holding each other accountable to whatever our weekly goals were in the area of cleaning and also looking at our hearts in this area of homemaking, so we looked at online resources and made plans for getting a handle on it all. I implemented a few basics which really worked wonders, so much so that Alex came home every night (almost :) to a nice clean home and I very much appreciated the feeling of peace and purpose that came with it. Waking up in the morning to a fresh environment makes the whole day that much better.

Then came Bethany. Babies, of course, bring such sweetness, sleeplessness at times, and at this age (10 months), a fierce case of separation anxiety making it next to impossible to even run up the stairs for a brief moment without her yelling very loudly at me. A month after her birth, I started school (via home study...let's hear it for timing) and the whole darn system fell apart. 100%. The time I would have spent on my systems now was dedicated solely to school work as soon as all the kids were in bed. I lost the energy to keep the kids on task with their chores because my system in that area was weak and undefined. As you can see, I view the running of a household as a study in and of itself and that it works best with systems and protocols in place. When those systems are not being followed, chaos ensues.

So I have rededicated myself to getting back on track. My next blog will share some of those systems we have reimplemented. Not that I by any means have this perfected. In fact, I should probably be considered a "non-resource" but I can be trained. :) Right now, I feel grateful that what we're doing seems to be getting us back on track. If you have ideas that have worked for you, please share them!