I’m a Mess
Raising little kids is challenging at times, but there’s also lots of hilarity. It’s changed me a lot. I’m totally not the person I was when I started having kids. For better or worse!
One of my daily challenges with children is cleaning. I’ve actually started collecting pictures of my kids making messes on the floor. Therefore, I have two stories with morals to share with you from my illustrious experience cleaning with kids:
First: I mopped my floor last week for the first time in… (wait, you didn’t think I was actually going to ADMIT the last time, did you?) I threw my kids into utter bewilderment by putting the chairs upside down on the table, like my Mama used to do, so I could thoroughly get under the table. Right after the floor was clean my kids tromped through with muddy feet from playing in the sprinkler, and I was so irritated. But if they’d sludged through the day before, I would have only rolled my eyes at the mess.
Moral #1: “Clean” is best treated as an abstract theory with children in the house. In other words, clean less. It can only lead to irritation.
Second: It’s important over the years of parenting to begin to settle into a few general rules of thumb when food spills on the floor. Can your children eat food off the floor once it’s been dropped? If so, at which level of “public” do you draw the line for floor eating? (McDonalds playplace, for instance, or a gas station bathroom?) My kids recently dropped half a bag of veggie straws on the floor- my son then started eating out of the bag again. I laughed at myself as I heard the words, “Don’t eat what’s in the bag, eat what’s on the floor first!” come out of my mouth. Um, yes. However, another day my 2 year old spilled half a bag of chocolate chips on the floor and I swept those right up.
Moral #2: Always judge whether your kids should eat off the floor by how much work you will have to do one way or the other. (Ex. If letting your kids eat of a mostly clean floor keeps you from having to clean up the snack, let them do it. But, if letting your kids eat off the floor will cause them to end up ingesting large amounts of sugar (requiring you to keep up with their energy for the next hour) or if said eating could give them a stomach bug (requiring infinitely more cleanup in the long run), do not let them floor-eat.
I hope this has been helpful. Please enjoy a handful of my mess pictures through the years:
Moral #3: Take pictures of the messes. It helps you see the humor in it all, and sometimes the best pictures are the messiest ones.