My House is a Mess!

so here's what i want to know... how do people have clean, tidy houses? and by people, i mean people with kids and no cleaning or landscaping service. in other words, people like me. i have this perpetual guilt complex about the state of my house. it's not even really that bad, but i have this (apparently unreal) fantasy about living in a house without crumbs on the carpet, clutter on every flat surface, clothes on bedroom floors, laundry half folded and not put away, and a garage that you can actually park your car in. i know these people exist, i just don't know how they do it. then i start to feel really guilty when i think of people like my great-grandmother who, at the turn of the century, was raising 8 kids on a farm in nebraska. she didn't have a washing machine or dishwasher. they didn't run out to the mall when they needed new clothes or bedding. they didn't have safeway.com delivering their groceries. they didn't have frozen costco meals for times when she 'forgot to cook dinner'. they didn't even have running water, i bet! well, i guess that means she didn't have bathrooms to clean. then again, i bet she didn't have a blog to update either.... it's official, i'm really just a lazy and incompetent homemaker! i guess it's not the end of the world. i just really would like to walk in one day and see everything clean and in it's place (i guess that would mean that everything actually had a place). i suppose if that actually happened i would just want to leave again, since living in your house is apparently what messes it up!

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for my not-so-american friends

i didn't have an actual roll w/ the green plaid on it, but i found a refill and an empty roll in my junk drawer (yeah, i know, that should tell me something). but even the empty one says 'scotch' on it. there you go! SCOTCH TAPE!

a blue period...

i'm feeling really lazy lately. well, some might think i'm lazy all the time, but it's worse right now. i always get really down on myself when i'm having trouble keeping things organized, when my house is a mess, when we eat mac and cheese for dinner, etc. usually that's appropriate motivation to get me off my butt and make me keep things in some sort of relative order. but night now it's really bad. i don't feel like doing anything. there are toys all over, and i purposely make myself not see them because i just don't want to pick them up. same with the dirt behind the door in the bathroom. the pile of clothes that need to be ironed, the mess in my bedroom, the crap falling out of the drawers in my bathroom, the garage. i don't want to go grocery shopping. i don't want to cook. the floor needs to be swept and mopped in the kitchen and dining room and the sink is dirty. the backyard is a total disaster and i just don't feel like ...

how to clean your room

i was discussing this sort of thing w/ my MIL recently and she said there were some books she had when the boys were young that explained things to kids that adults often tell them to do w/out giving them explicit instructions. so i thought about it and decided to write my own. i mean, really, if i expect shane to clean his room, i ought to tell him HOW i want him to clean it, so he knows what i expect. so i wrote them out. keep in mind, these are 9 year old instructions. they would have to be adjusted accordingly. i actually don’t expect him to do much less than i would expect of myself. (bummer for him!) How to clean your room: strip your bed. put all dirty clothes in the laundry basket put all clean clothes in the closet or dresser put all shoes in the rack on the door. pick up everything off the floor and put it on your bed to sort. start by throwing away anything that’s trash. return anything that doesn’t belong in your r...

holiday?

so i’ve had a skeleton of this post bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks now. i’m not even really sure what the point of it is, or what my opinion on the matter really is, except that it’s something that’s kind of irritating me. have you noticed that christmas has been, more or less, completely deleted? listen to your radio. watch the commercials on tv. read the ads in the paper. nothing. it’s like ‘christmas’ has become a dirty word. now before anyone gets their dander all up, this is not a particularly religiously-inspired post, not that i disagree with the idea that ‘Christ’ should remain the center of ‘Christ’mas. but that’s not what this is about. i’m a ‘word person’. i love language. i love the idiosyncrasies that that come with spoken and written language. i love that humans have the ability to string letters and words and sentences together to create something beautiful, or funny, or clever, or ANYTHING! it’s just a wonderful thing. i love that we can trace say...

finally!

here are layla’s curtains! actually up on the window! i have to say i’m quite pleased with myself for actually getting this done. but i have to give credit where credit is due… so thanks to my MIL for going to the fabric store w/ me and helping me with measurements and all that. AND, thanks to debbie for letting me use her sewing machine and for ironing all the hems for me! YAY!!!!

rachel's continued ramblings

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