Southern Living Homes or An otherwise lame attempt to explain why my house is always trashed

I really love descriptive writing of first impressions or first arrivals. Anne's first glimpse of Green Gables, Laura's description of the surveyor's house and pantry, and my favorite, Harry's arrival at the Burrow. Harry grew up in a home where everything was perfect, all the time. The Burrow stands in stark contrast. It is a little run down, the yard needs some work, there are boots piled at the doorstep. The house has a cluttered feel. Ron is a little embarrassed, but Harry sees and feels the love and comfort of a family that is actually busy about living life and caring for each other.

I think I love this because despite my continued hopes, I am still a terrible housekeeper. I did not grow up in a world of what I call Southern Living homes. The magazine of the same name regularly came to our house and as I got a little older, I studied the pictures from time to time. I didn't think anybody really lived like this, anymore than I thought most people looked like the models on the covers of fashion magazines. Don't get me wrong, the people I lived with and visited didn't live in squalor, there homes just looked, well, lived in. There was usually laundry waiting to be folded somewhere. Most of us had very small laundry rooms so that meant laundry was on a couch or a chair. Canning jars or other things were always on the kitchen counter and if they taught like my mom and my friends mom did, there was a makeshift teachers workroom somewhere in the house. No one extra came to clean or was ever even discussed. The closest we ever came to this was Senior "Slave" Days at my mom's school, where for a donation to the senior trip, some students came to your house and did odd jobs. I realize I was a kid, but I don't remember feeling constantly bothered by this or feeling like we being judged for our lack of perfect homes.

Enter 2009. Lots of people around me have Southern Living homes. They are not only perfectly decorated, but always kept clean and presentable. I hear people joke about mess etc to such a point that I live in fear that someone will come to the door uninvited. I apologize for the state of our house constantly and never feel like it is enough. Lets be honest, to some people it won't be. But ....life is about choices.

I spend a lot of time with L, but even without that, our house would still have plenty of issues. I don't want to stop creative ideas and thinking so the girls' rooms are a little bit of a blank canvas. They change bedspreads as their moods and interests change. They have cheap posters and personal artwork all over the walls. They build lego every things all over the place and J runs train track in constantly changing patterns. L needs toys visible and low so she can get to them. We cook and eat multiple times a day. We do projects. They cut up boxes for clubs and mailboxes. H needs a personal supply of tape. I grow things in the kitchen. We recycle. We compost. We let the whole thing go and read for hours or Brian and I just spend time together talking about nothing in general. We dance in the kitchen on the sticky floor. I look at the to do list and make cookies instead.

And then.... I feel guilty and horrible and frustrated and like a very bad mom and make everybody miserable as we try to get things done. Plain and simply, I don't want to live in a Southern Living home. Let me just admit to all that I can't keep house, don't expect it if you come by and keep all judgements to your self. L may have made a mess in the above picture, but she picked up the cups herself and tilted the cups over her head. A wrist action we have worked on forever. Nothing inspires like dirt. Let's see those perfect homes do that!