Last week, as I rushed around getting my house ready to host Bible study, I happened to glance over at the living room sofa. There, sitting in the corner, was my little white dog, Jethro. My white dog. On my dark sofa. During shedding season.
I quickly shooed him off, but the damage was done. White dog hair covered the sofa I had cleaned not thirty minutes earlier. I sighed with frustration. I was on a time crunch and did not have time for this nonsense. Have you ever been there?
The desire to keep things clean
I’m the first to admit that I’m not a neat person by nature. In fact, I’ve spent much of my adult life battling my pack-rat tendencies and training myself to keep things neat and clean. Confession: I’m secretly terrified of becoming one of those people on that show, Hoarders, so there’s that.
I don’t invite people over when my house isn’t presentable. The thought of other people seeing the mess is unheard of. I guess I think they’ll judge me or think I’m not a good wife or mom if there’s laundry on the couch or dishes in the sink (which I know is ridiculous because I have amazing family and friends who don’t judge, but it’s still a fear).
Now that I’ve trained myself to keep things clean, I get super stressed out when they aren’t. Clutter is the bane of my existence and drives me absolutely crazy. I hate trying to cook in a kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink. And the endless mess of pet hair grinds my gears.
Cleaning is never-ending
My husband and I love animals and basically have a mini zoo at our house. We’ve got three dogs (Hank, Maggie, and Jethro) and two cats (Echo and Sonar). Needless to say, there is pet hair everywhere, all the time. Our floors are hardwood and tile, so the hair really has nowhere to go. I can sweep five times a week and still find little hair bunnies (not dust bunnies) scurrying around the floor when someone walks down the hall.
I bet you have a similar situation at your house. Perhaps you have dishes that never seem to leave the sink. Or maybe your laundry perpetually hangs out in the living room, never making it to the closets or drawers. Maybe you’re drowning in clutter. We’ve all been there; it’s part of having a family.
Your house will never be “perfect”
I hate to be the one to tell you, but your house will never be perfectly clean. You could be the best housekeeper in the world and clean everything five times a day, but there will always be something else that needs to be done.
No matter how hard you try, there will always be another room to dust, load of laundry to do, drawer to declutter, and refrigerator to clean out. You will always find crumbs and sticky things from little fingers. There will always be another pair of your husband’s socks lying around.
Don’t sweat the small stuff
Since there is not way your home will ever be perfectly clean while people live there, I want to encourage you to not stress so much about it. Yes, cleanliness is important, but don’t work yourself and your family into a tizzy if things aren’t just so.
As women, we have this insane desire to make things perfect. And I honestly think it gets worse with age. When I was in high school and college, I didn’t care as much if my living space was clean. But now that I’m older and have a family, it seems like all I do is try to keep the house up to par. I truly believe that it’s not healthy to get so worked up about keeping everything just so. I’m not saying that those things don’t need to be done. But don’t obsess over them and panic when you can’t get to them.
Focus on what matters
Do the best you can, and then walk away. There are so many other things that matter more than your kitchen being spotless. Spending quality time with your husband is so much more important than organizing the file cabinet. Playing with and reading to your babies is way more important than scrubbing the kitchen cabinets.
When your kids are grown, they aren’t going to remember if the house was dusted every day or if the laundry was always put away the second it came out of the dryer. They’re going to remember you sitting on the floor with them building castles with blocks. They will remember you singing silly songs and reading to them at nap time.
Don’t fret about the little things, mama. There will always be time to clean your house, but your kids won’t be kids forever. Focus on the things that matter and leave the dog hair for another day.
