Clean vs. Neat

Sweet Boy

There is always the first child...
      So, the way I see it, with your first kid, some have a system some don't. There seems to be some wiggle room there for individual interpretation, if you will. You can be a rigid 'junior eats at precisely 8:02 am' parent or a 'go with the flow, whatever we feel like' parent and it seems to work.

So people have a second...

Baby Girl

     The second child often makes people think, "We need some rules around here or basic guide lines of some sort." and a system is born. Often the system is beautiful and complete with two children. The chaos of life is manageable with minimal panic. Things get done and there are enough hands to deal with the break downs. Life is a little louder and more stressful but you can always call a sitter and slip out for the evening to recoup.

The Little Prince

And then there was a third...
     Thus far in my experience it seems it is the third child that makes God laugh, pat you on your sweet overconfident head, and then break your beautiful system in to tiny irreparable pieces. After my third child, who was not a difficult child by most standards, my whole system fell apart. I'm talking, sitting in my living room surrounded by piles of whatnot crying with all the children, apart.

Real life- you can't see it but
the youngest is weeping too.

    To be fair, it may be that I'm not especially well cut out for this big family thing, or that my standards are too high (Ha! She said standards!), or even that I was fooling myself to think that I ever had a system that really worked. I have considered this and decided that I really think it's just that my beautiful little prince broke my system. My system, and to an extent, me, maxed out at two and burst at the seams with three.

   And here is the crux of the matter. The real trouble I have, as I drift in system-less space, can be summed up like this: There is a saying that trying to clean with a toddler in the house is like trying to brush your teeth while eating Oreos. Now multiply that times three. Though I like the idea of three Oreos (hold the toothpaste) I'm actually referring to the rampant destruction that three children can leave in the wake of their every move.
Let me explain how things have changed.

          Instead of a quarantine on the mess created while your work in another area, for example: "Go disassemble your room while I clean the main living areas", you have to quarantine the cleanness, for example: "No one in the living room making a mess behind me while I'm cleaning it." Instead of picking up the toys in the living room you try to remove the choking hazards in the living room. Instead of "Put your dirty clothes in the hamper" it is "Toss your clothes in the laundry room and hope that nothing eats you alive when you open it's door".

    I could go on but from here we enter the realm of you don't want to know, its all down hill from there, and it might make me cry a little.

"We got Mommy's phone!"

     I have never been a neat person but I have always been a clean person. It's a "I might have clutter and piles but my toilets are clean" sort of thing. Having to let go of that has been the hardest part of having three children for me. My family needs neat to function and clean may or may not follow as closely as I like when my attempt to transition from straightening up so things are neat to cleaning is interrupted by a wrestling match gone wrong, the mystery thuds followed by screams, or a blow out diaper.
 
     The question I keep asking myself is how do I feel content, and confident, enough in my sometimes partially neat house to have friends over, or host a play-date and not cringe and apologize. It is a questions that I don't have an answer to. Maybe I need to embrace the chaos, relax and let go. Maybe I need to put in some extra energy and effort to try to find a neatness solution that will work for my family. I always seem to find, after much prayer and petition, that the answer is somewhere in the middle. A happy medium that results in a functional solution that takes into account the big picture and yet allows me to take pride in a home that will always look like happy children live there.

     I wouldn't trade my little mess makers for the world, they one of the most precious things in my life and are a constant source of joy...

.... but I have considered confiscating their allowance to hire a maid.