How to Be Less Frustrated and Exhausted by the Mess Your Kids Make
Are you dealing with a constant cycle of cleaning up after your kids?
Due to COVID, kids’ activities are limited and family rhythms are dismantled or at least disrupted. Some of you have kids who would normally be at school, but are now home learning remotely. The kids actually never leave…and you never get a break. Keeping your home neat and organized can feel like a hopeless, endless effort.
Just as you’ve tidied up the kids’ work stations for tomorrow’s school day, they pull out their toys and scatter them all over the floor.
Or, you want to encourage their reading. But do they have to take every book off the bookshelf that, truth be told, you’d like to organize by color?
And, of course, one meal, one snack, one meal, one snack, and on and on means you pretty much have something to do in the kitchen at all times – whether it’s preparing the next meal or cleaning up the last one.
What is the problem? Is it you? Is it your kids? Why can’t you have a home that looks like all those other homes on Pinterest?
Oh the years, the hours, the moments I spent trying to get my playroom to look picture-perfect.
I felt the shame of stacks of books often on the floor instead of neatly aligned, if not color coordinated, size-ordered books. I felt the disappointment of the plastic fried eggs and bacon being mixed in with the fruits and vegetables or worse, the mini-utensils, in our play kitchen. I cried a time or two as I attempted day after day, one more time, to make my kids’ happy place look like my dream space. I tried so hard to keep the Legos in one pretty basket, the Play School pieces in another, the crayons separated from the markers separated from the colored pencils.
And then, the kids grew up.
The play kitchen was sent off to my niece so her kids could enjoy it. The books were distributed to area libraries or Goodwill…and the really special ones are in labeled boxes in the attic so we know whose favorites they are. The Play Doh, markers, colored pencils went into a spot in the basement, just in case my husband, a creative thinking teacher, has use for them.
I, despite my husband’s objections, squirreled away a few cartons of the kids’ favorite toys. Or were they my favorites? The Fisher-Price Farm Playset and Little People Main Street, the Medical Kit, Marching Band Set. We saved a lot of Barbies (I might be rich with these collector pieces except my girls gave them horrific haircuts), their outfits, treadmill, car, purses, mismatched shoes. And, how about those Polly Pocket sets? I loved them all My kids loved them all, so I thought my grandchildren might too!
I can tell you now my house is neat as a pin.
We’ve smart-sized, so our home is smaller and very manageable. My pillows are mostly plumped on any given day. My books are hidden behind closed cabinet doors for the most part (but still not color-coordinated!). Meals are kept pretty simple. And bathrooms are relatively spotless.
Enter my grandchildren – ages almost four and six.
Given the opportunity, these kids are wildly gleefully messy. We keep their toys stored in big plastic bins in the basement. There’s no color-coordination, pieces to sets are usually in the same bin but not behind the correct barn or candy store door, and, God forbid, there may be a rogue Barbie shoe in with the Medical Kit.
When the kids come to visit, it’s not long before they’re asking to go into the basement. My husband goes downstairs with them and they decide on which box or two they’ll start with. And before long, all four or five bins are dumped on our living room floor. Each day, at the end of the day, they dump the toys back in the bins, until they’re ready to dump them back out again tomorrow.
My grandkids have taught me two things (and many more) I wish I knew before now. Hindsight is indeed 20/20!
Kids are messy! Those messes? They’re signs of life, learning, growing, playing, exploring, laughing…and the occasional battle or tears over a toy.
Kids grow up. Before you know it, your home will be neat as a pin too.
Are you fighting a losing battle of keeping your home picture-perfect? What can you do to balance the desire for a semblance of order with the freedom kids need to play?