Stylepilot
The cycle of the laundry
So, I have a small daughter here at home, she is great, I love her to the moon and back. But O.M.G. she leaves a trial of destruction every single day. Food all over the place, toys all over the place, blankets and pillows all over the place. For not mentioning my own mess. There are a ton of dirty dishes on the counter waiting to magically fly down into the dishwasher, all the dirty clothes laying neatly besides the washing machine in the bathroom, but normally the machine would always be standing with the wet clothes from the day before, waiting to get it changed into the dryer, but oh yeah, the dryer is also already full with dried clothes, waiting to be picked out, folded and put into its places. But I hate emptying the dryer, because I know the clothes will just lay for a couple of days on the sofa and I know, that it takes around a month before the clothes finally find their way back into our closets, so sometimes it just seems easier to watch the pile of dirty clothes grow bigger and bigger every day.
I real mom keeps a 100 % clean home, or?
My daughter is a toddler now, but when she was a baby, I constantly felt guilty about not being able to be that kind of a mom, the mom who had a commercial approved, clean, sterilized, baby proofed, baby safe, and an always ready for guests home. I would literally cry some days over my own unfitness to do simple mommy tasks. Because everybody knows how awful of a mom you are, if you can’t keep your home spotless, right?
Well I truly did believe it myself, just coming home from the hospital with a premature baby, where we had been spending 6 weeks in a sterilized hell. I was convinced that if I didn’t run all over the place everyday, vacuuming, washing floors, washing dishes, washing clothes, wiping down every surface, sterilizing pumps, bottles and the hundreds of pacifiers that ended up on the floor daily, that my kid would suffer from it, become ill or probably even die. Yeah I know it now, pregnancy hormones really hit my brain hard, I totally lacked all sense of logic and reality. But that was how I felt at that moment!
Finding a solution that works for me
I have never been the cleaning type (ask my mom, dad, friends, acquaintances, teachers). I think it has something to do with my total lack of organizing and putting things into system, and worst of all, comply with these. And believe me, my mom really tried changing this, I just seem more like my dad in this area. And that is O.K., after I snapped out of it, I started thinking about ways to make it all work, and since my mom is from Africa and apparently loves to clean, well I decided to pay her to come and clean my home when needed (I pay her so I have the opportunity to bitch if there is something I am not satisfied with) and then I just have to try to maintain it until the next time, however it normally only lasts for a single day.
What you are doing is right
Looking back at the first couple of months with my newborn girl, I would have wished that I didn’t remember these feelings of not doing a well enough job, that all thoughts would go directly to the world only turning around me and her. So to every other mom, with small, medium or bigger kids, who still feel like they are not doing a good-enough job around the house, well actually also to people not feeling they get the job done perfectly enough, LET IT GO. If you don’t get it done today, well you will get it done by tomorrow, probably… or the day after that again. It doesn’t really matter, the thing that should count is that you are the best version you can be, and that you have more than enough time and love to shower those who are closest to your heart everyday.
Camilla