Diary of a Mom: My Living Room is a Mess

Cleaning Tips For Homes With Kids - Things You Can Do When Your Kids Destroy Your Living Room - Control Toy Clutter Without A Playroom
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It’s 10 am and my house is trashed. I have stepped on and broken 3 crayons. There is a half empty bowl of goldfish crackers sitting on the floor next to a chair. There are pillows thrown in front of the TV. Additionally, alphabet magnets have taken over my kitchen floor.

At 7 am this morning my house was clean. 3 hours later and the tornado that is my toddler has managed to trash my living room. I tell him it’s time to clean up. He helps clean up. 3 hours from now this living room will be trashed again.

This is what mom life looks like. A living room with toys everywhere. A toddler that for his size can destroy my clean house in a matter of minutes.

While we often use funny phrases like “Sorry for the mess, my child is making memories,” the honest truth is very simple. My child is learning, pushing his limits, and has a short attention span. This means my house will be messy.

I only have one child. How do moms with two or more do it? Is this is why moms stop tidying the house? The house will always look messy even after she’s scrubbed and organized everything. I’m just happy my husband works from home too and sees exactly what happens to our nice clean home.

If this is your home too there are a few things to do to help with this situation until your children stop making a mess … scratch that these are just things you can do to help with this situation.

Check out my post Diary of a Mom: I’m Not Ignoring My Son.

Curl Up In A Ball

Go ahead momma, cry it out. All the hard work you put is being ruined within hours of it being accomplish. You curl up into that ball and start crying. Grab the bottle of wine, crawl under your desk and let it out.

Or, you can just roll with it. The mess is bound to happen, there is nothing we can really do about it. Just keep teaching your child to clean up when they are done playing with a toy and soon it will become habit to them.

Lose Your Shit

You absolutely could lose your shit. I have lost my shit over this situation. It happens and it’s ok if you lose your shit. Every mom and some point will lose her shit and that is ok.

If you feel like you are going to lose your shit and you really don’t want to use the “Mommy Time Out Rule.” Basically, send yourself to time out.

Lock yourself in a bathroom or closet and breathe through it. Hide some chocolates or salty snacks in your hiding spot too. Make sure your husband understands what the “Mommy Time Out Rule” is.

Give Up

Just stop cleaning all together. They are just gonna mess it up in an hour or so. Why bother cleaning so much when you can just let the mess pile up.

We all know that we won’t just stop cleaning all together. However, take a day off. Don’t clean for a day, in fact add a no cleaning day to your normal weekly schedule. Everyone needs a day off, since no one gets a day off from being a parent, take a day off from your chores instead.

Check out my post Diary of a Mom: Feeling Like A Bad Mom.

Throw It All Away

Grab the garbage bags. Not the kitchen garbage bags the big black ones that are for the garage. Use those. Start throwing away every single toy until your child cries or joins in thinking it’s a fun game. Either way the mess goes away.

Ok you don’t actually throw anything away. Instead consider rotating toys. Pick only a few toys that your kid likes to play with. About every 3 months you rotate out the toys. This lowers the amount of toys that can be pulled out messing up your living room.

Get Sneaky

It’s 4pm and your husband gets home at 5. The house is trashed. Now is the time to clean. That’s right run through the place throwing toys into kids rooms, putting all the dirty dishes in the sink, and quickly vacuum your floors.

Ok so this is one thing that you actually want to do. If you vacuum, dust, and do housework regularly there is no reason to drive yourself crazy cleaning up after every single mess. Save the clean up for about an hour before anyone comes home or visits.

This keeps you from going crazy cleaning all day long, you know that you’ll clean it all up about half way through the day.

Laugh About It

Laugh about the minor annoyance now instead of years from now. One day you will look back to this day and feel a bit of sadness over it all being over. You’ll miss the crack of a crayon breaking under your foot.

The sounds of the most annoying toy ever will probably never be missed. However, you’ll miss the time in which you spent hours trying to figure out how to “accidentally” break it, though you never did.

My Messy Living Room

My child may make a mess, however, I will have the memories of him putting every single alphabet magnet on his daddy’s desk. Laying down on the floor under a blanket fort coloring. Tickle attacks and light saber battles.

My living room is messy, I’ll clean it up later. Right now I just want to watch as my son learns yet another skill that will serve him well in the future, no matter how much it annoys me right in this moment.

Check out my post How To Embrace The Mess.

Final Thoughts

I like having a clean house. Mainly because I fear the day that someone might stop by unannounced and see my messy house. So I do daily chores and then about halfway through the day clean up the messes my son makes.

We do not need to have perfectly clean homes all the time. So we need to lighten up a little on ourselves. Lower those expectations and enjoy the moment.

How do you handle the messes your children make? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your parenting or housekeeping boards.

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Cleaning Tips For Homes With Kids - Things You Can Do When Your Kids Destroy Your Living Room - Control Toy Clutter Without A Playroom

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