Pictures of my messy house (and what I’m going to do about it)

Last week my friend introduced me to a new girl from church. She’d just joined our congregation, and the two of them had dropped by to visit for a few minutes.

As she introduced us, my friend mentioned that I love to write, that I’ve got a blog and a trio of kids, and then she added, “Jamie’s got it all together.”

I could feel myself turn bright red. I was very flattered (I’m super lucky to have friends like that, huh?) but I didn’t want the new girl to get the wrong idea. I told her that I had the things that mattered most to me pretty much in balance.

But then I pointed out the untidy floor and table just behind us–not because I felt like I needed to apologize for the mess, but because I wanted her to know that I’m a work in progress, too.

My House is Messy

Over the past few years I’ve figured out a lot about balance, building systems, and automating the mundane to-dos. But I’m not good at math. I don’t like to cook. And I haven’t have figured out how to keep our house at a more consistently manageable level of clean-upable messy.

Last year I read It’s Here… Somewhere, and started a massive de-cluttering of our house. (How hipster am I–I was decluttering before the KonMari craze–though she’s on my list too! 😉 ) That has helped A TON, but it didn’t fix one of the biggest clutter problems: our messy behaviors.

So I snagged a copy of The House That Cleans Itself from the library, and this week I dove in.

I’m only a few chapters in, but already I can see this is going to be (a) quite a bit of work and (b) really, really helpful.

Because I hate cleaning. But I hate messes more. 🙂

I’ll be working through the book starting with our family room–so I thought I’d give you a sneak peak into some of the hot-mess that is our house on any given afternoon. Vindication, mamas! You’re not the only one.

Pictures of my Messy House!

Hey wait a second, you’re thinking. That doesn’t look messy at all.

True. This part of the room looked pretty good the day I took these pictures, but it’s not all sunshine and roses.

(Please note: the hubs is not lazy–just taking a break. We both get downtime when the kiddos have their quiet time. He just doesn’t take pictures of me doing mine and then post them on the internet. :p )

Let’s move on, shall we? I promise, its going to get better.

Here’s a very clean day at our command-station bookcase:

I admit, I got a little discouraged and didn’t label all the individual weird things on the floor:

You guys, this is what my floor looks like ALL. THE. TIME:

Sometimes I’m so tired once my little 20-month-old tornado is actually in bed that we just step over the tupperware and shoes and stuff that she’s spread all over and flop down on the couch.

You do this, too, right?

It’s just that the siren call of a cute husband, a Netflix show (we’re watching Grand Hotel right now–in Spanish with subtitles, but TOTALLY WORTH IT), and a nice bowl of cookie dough is just too much.

This book promises that I changing my house is going to help it stay cleaner–even without changing much of our behavior.

I’m skeptical but hopeful–and I’ll keep you posted!