My Dirty Little Secret

Here it is friends, I’m airing my dirty laundry figuratively & literally, & it’s not easy, but I know there’s an exhausted woman out there who needs to see my unfiltered mess with this honest post today. I have felt like failure everyday I’ve walked in this room for the last two weeks, but why?

 Truthfully, I almost didn’t post this, & when I decided to, I contemplated cleaning it up just a little so it wouldn’t look as out of control. I feared being judged or misunderstood, & some insecurity crept in for few minutes. Then I thought about how incredible I am. How hard I work every day, & all the things I accomplish, & I then I didn’t give a crap about anyone who would judge me for my laundry situation. So, I decided to share, in part for the women out there who need to hear it, & maybe in part because I need to hear it. Maybe I’m hoping someone else will come along side me & say yup, I hear you girl, you’re not alone. 

 I’ve had a lot of women reach out to me recently saying they don’t know how I do it all. They have said things like, “oh my gosh how do you always look amazing,” “I wish I could get it together enough to cook dinners like you,” “I don’t know how you keep your whole house so clean & decorated for every season,” & “I’m so jealous you always look cute & are doing fun things.” I laugh every time when they say things like “always”, or “whole house”, & even just at the fact they falsely believe I’m so “put together.” STOP BEING FOOLED LADIES! Social media is not REAL life ALL the time! I’ll admit that I’m a little OCD, so my house is picked up most of the time, but I would not say it is clean all the time. My laundry room has piles of clean, dirty, needs to be hung, needs to be ironed, etc. I know where & what it is, but it’s still a mess.  My life right now is like my laundry room...organized chaos. Much like looking at people’s lives through social media, the people who get to come in my house think everything looks really put together & impressive. To those who open this sliding door, well...it looks like an absolute you know what show.

You also can’t see the spots on my floors that haven’t been mopped in weeks in fb photos, & you can’t see the dust collecting on my ceiling fans on insargram. And as far as the comments about looking great everyday...my husband would laugh in your face & so would the moms at story time on Tuesday mornings. Those are the days we take all the photos of the cute kids, dressed like they’re going somewhere completely different from their baseball capped, t shirt adorning moms. Social media is for our best days, & that’s great. I love that we can share our highs there, our kick butt days in hot outfits with perfect hair. But in between all those amazing days is life too. The not so incredible parts of life that aren’t for the internet. The days we’re crying on a pile of laundry, because the baby won’t sleep & the dog threw up on the carpet, & there’s bills to pay, & homework to help with, & an endless amount of work to do it before you get to rock that fussy baby till the sun comes up & it starts over. Sometimes it’s a day that feels like this & sometimes it’s a season or even a year, but there are always brighter days. Right now, I’m in a beautiful season, but it’s also a season that continues to teach me to let go of things & show myself grace the way I so easily give it to others

 Running a therapy business while kids run around me has proved to be a serious challenge that requires me to let go of the SAHM version I always thought I would be in order to make room for building a career.  And even though I feel like I still make my family a priority, I sometimes drop the ball or am late to the party, literally, & when I do, I show up with store bought cookies instead of homemade.  The first thing I had to let go of was complete order. So, here’s my dirty little secret. At all times there is always one space in my life that is a complete mess. I don’t know why it’s like this, but it’s been that way since I was a kid. It’s weird since I’m OCD in other ways. Like, I have to have things in their place & organized. Even if someone just puts their keys on the counter instead of the key basket, I have to move them to the basket. I can’t relax until I’ve checked all around the house making sure all toys have been returned to the playroom, & I make all the beds first thing every morning just to name a few. Despite all of this, I have somehow allowed one space to be a complete train wreck. When I was a kid it was normally my backpack, then before having kids, it was one small closet in our house that you could barely open without stuff tumbling out. Now with two kids, work, coaching, & fun side gigs, it always rotates between three places. The laundry room & current culprit, my bedroom closet, & my car. If you come to my home at any given time you will find one of these three spaces in complete disarray.

 Thankfully I never let more than one go at a time, but it still bugs me. Honestly, I really beat myself up over it too. Like even walking by the door stresses me out, because I know it needs my attention. I don't know about you, but I always feel stretched thin. Like there’s never enough hours in the day, because there just isn’t. This leads to feeling tired since I often exchange sleep for work or getting more things done. The idea of cloning has always really creeped me out, but sometimes as I’m looking over excel spreadsheets or meal planning at 2am, I think about how I might be down with taking my chances on some sketchy robot replica of me if it meant I could go to bed & wake up to clean house & fed & dressed children. Maybe someday. But as for now, you’re all you got so be kind to yourself. 

 Today I needed reminding to show myself grace, because I felt so defeated when walking in here. I felt like a failure, because I’m a mom who needs specific items for my family members tomorrow & right now I have no freaking clue where they are or if they’re dirty or clean, but I do know if I’m lucky enough to find them & find them clean, they will need ironing, & I loathe ironing. The day my husband left the military I looked at my iron, said a few choice words to it & did a happy dance knowing I would never press another uniform. But here I am about to get reacquainted due to poor planning.

 This is a space I have hidden from everyone, & I’ve been super embarrassed at the thought of anyone seeing how I could let it get like this. Today I realized how obnoxious it is to be embarrassed to the extent that I was when my mother in law almost walked in & when my neighbor accidentally mistook it for the bathroom & opened the door. Over the last two weeks, I did countless crafts (Thanksgiving craft ideas will be on the blog this weekend), bible lessons, & fun activities with my children. I gave them my undivided attention. I planned & cooked healthy meals (my recipes will be up next week). I handled countless issues at work, held five wine tastings, gave a sweet friend a makeover for a wedding, shared a few blogs, helped my dad with his business, threw a Halloween party, took two weekend trips, & even made time for several yoga classes & facetiming with a friend & her new baby, not to mention a billion other things. I accomplished a crap ton in two weeks so, so what if laundry didn’t make that long list of things done. And actually it half makes it, because we needed things like clean underwear, so I did do wash with every intention of folding & puting away. But then I got busy, so the pile went from the dryer to a basket, to the counter so I could use the basket for the next clean load of clothes I wasn’t about fold, to the floor when my husband went digging for clean socks, to mixed in with some dirty clothes when my daughter went digging in the clean pile on the floor for her PE clothes. So now, you’re seeing clean piles mingling with dirty items, which I guess makes it all dirty & makes me want to cry.  

But my point is, why do we kill ourselves ladies? Why do we set these obnoxious, unattainable standards for ourselves?! And worst of all, why do we refuse to take any time to rest & recharge?! Granted, maybe I should have kept on top of the laundry & gave up something else, but I do recognize that I couldn’t have done everything I needed to do the last couple weeks, & that quite frankly I worked myself harder than I should have, even with leaving laundry off the list. And you did too! No doubt you have a list of accomplishments as long as mine, if not longer. Maybe your list looks different, hopefully your laundry game is on point, but regardless of what it looks like, you did a lot, so don’t beat yourself up for anything that you missed or any balls you dropped.

 I walked in this room depressed & feeling like a crap mom, but I’m walking out feeling a lot lighter. Instead of looking at it like all the things I didn’t do, I’m looking at it as a reminder that my life is full of blessings, opportunities, & people that I poured into so much these last two weeks that I didn’t have time to do fold clothes.  So, not only am I not going to fold any of this crap right now, I’m also about to pour me a glass of my Dove Hunt Cabernet Sauvignon (get it here), prop my feet up on the ottoman & pat myself on the back. Cheers to us, friends! The laundry can wait one more day.