The incompetent housewife

The incompetent housewife. That’s me.

I don’t know how I’m so bad at this?! I have always been messy. But my house has always been clean. Now it’s a whole different story.

Running my own business and looking after a toddler and 2 dogs is messier, no, dirtier than I thought. I just summoned the energy to tidy and hoover downstairs. There are suspect patches on the carpet. They weren’t there yesterday. What are they?!?! I’m not sure there’s any point in tidying and cleaning anymore. I can hear my daughter throwing toys around in the kitchen whilst I take a moment to write this. The clattering is deafening. But I’m not stopping her! Shortly the dogs will come in from the garden, and trample even more of their muddy pawprints all through the house. It’s to be destroyed in no time at all.

I randomly discover things. Bags mainly. Today it was a bag of tea towels and cloths stuffed behind the bin. I’ve been missing these for weeks. Coco had emptied half the drawer into a bag and hidden it. And I hadn’t seen it.

I haven’t cleaned the bathroom in ages. With a needy dog and Coco shadowing my every move with intrigue, it does make it tricky!

I don’t iron anything. Yep you heard me, not a single thing, ever. I genuinely don’t know where my iron is.

Its such mayhem downstairs, I haven’t even made it upstairs to clean in, well, forever. Apart from Coco’s room. Our bedroom is a disaster. You can barely get to the bed for all the piles of clean clothes that haven’t been put away, all the Christmas stuff we don’t know what to do with (yes still!), bags for charity from our last clearout weeks months ago. And I couldn’t tell you the last time I dusted in there.

You probably think I really need to get my act together.

But all of this imperfection and disorganised chaos, I think is a good thing.

Why?

Because I spend my time doing what is most important to me.

Cleaning can wait. Its not the end of the world if I don’t do it today, or tomorrow. I’m not going to lie, sometimes it bugs me that the house looks like a toddler/dog tornado ripped through it, and I will clean like a frenzied mad woman. But on the whole, its all ok. I get to work in the mornings, I get to be outside, sometimes with my daughter, sometimes not. If not she is spending quality time with her grandma. Then we get home, have lunch together, and then we do things. Whether it be go to the park, the zoo, painting, making junk art, play dough, shopping, on lazy days watching a film and chatting about it and dancing to the songs, or going for a cake and a coffee/juice. Then once its time for me to make dinner our focused Mommy and Coco time stops, and I turn into frantic Mommy! I cook, I clean the kitchen, I hoover, shove toys in the toy box, sweep and hang up washing. Yes I am slightly possessed for at least an hour. But I do the bare minimum.

I don’t want my daughter to look back and just remember me cleaning and stressing out about the house. I want us to spend time together, and for her to remember that. I want us to have a good bond, I want to enjoy her. I don’t want to just spend my day working and cooking and cleaning with her entertaining herself, that doesn’t feel right to me. I love the fact that I am relaxed enough that she can get covered in paint, cover the kitchen in paint. We do a lot of paint throwing onto paper and foot/hand painting. I don’t stress over it. Its just paint! Play dough – same story, yes it ends up all over the floor and ground into clothes, but it comes out/sweeps up. Its all good. Sometimes on walks she wants to lay in a puddle, so long as she’s got all her waterproofs on that’s great. Chill out in a puddle, why the hell not!? Yes my daughter probably looks a mess a lot of the time, she’s muddy or coloured in, come to think of it I probably am too! But she’s happy and so am I.

For many months I felt incredibly overwhelmed every single day. How was I meant to work and get the house done and spend time with her. I couldn’t get my priorities straight. I have never ever been a consistently tidy person, I’m your stereotypical creative chaos type! So why since becoming a Mother did I feel all this pressure to be the ‘perfect’ housewife and the ‘perfect’ mother. Because of this Coco was the one missing out. It took me far too long to work out this routine we now have. It works so well for us, and I can see the change in her and me. I still have days where I feel totally overwhelmed, I get cross with hubby as soon as he walks in the door. Why can’t he do more around the house? Because he works insane hours that’s why! But overall I feel much better. I have to remember that I wasn’t the perfect housewife before I had Coco, why should I become that now? And that I am the perfect Mom. I am Coco’s perfect Mom. We sing, we dance, we chase each other round the house squealing and jump out at each other. We leap over and creep around imaginary snakes that have invaded the house. We race cars. We wind up the needy dog. I encourage her creative side and for her to try new and scary things, even if she does get muddy or fall over. She is growing, becoming braver by the day and less scared of getting things wrong. I am there to pick her up and cuddle her when things go wrong, to encourage her when she’s worried to try something, and to yell ‘YAY’ and ‘YIPPPEEEEEE’ with her when it goes well!  I am her perfect Mom. She is my perfect girl.

So housework, you can do one, I’ll come back for you when Coco’s at school. Maybe not even then! At least not reliably!

Yours
The proudly incompetent housewife
xxx

The Tale of Mummyhood