My mom's hobby is cleaning

“My mom’s hobby is cleaning.”

This is the description written of me on the Mother’s day card my son made for me at preschool.

At first, this made me crack up.

I laughed with my mom when I told her about it.  I said “thank goodness he didn’t say my hobby was drinking wine.”

It seemed like the best case scenario.  Because when I dive deep, what does he actually see me do? Couch rot, post on social media, work out ( haha sometimes), clean the house, make soup, drink wine, call my mom.

Basically I don’t have a huge, active life. And I don’t have a lot of hobbies. But I am a mom, this is normal, right? Moms aren’t out playing golf for 6 hours, after all.

So, I initially didn’t have big feelings about this statement other than it was funny.

I hung the card up on my little calendar board in my kitchen, mostly because I love anything my children make that is just for me.

My feelings began to change, however, after I walked by it daily, for months.  It started to kind of bug me.  I could not explain why, it just, started to be an ick.

Like, why is this what he would remember about me?

Because…

 I fucking HATE cleaning.

I am not a neat freak.

I clean when I have to, like if we are having company over.

And I usually yell.

And this, made me realize that they only know I “like to clean” because I make it important when we’re having company over.  I make it important when things start to get overwhelming at the house, and I start to lose control of the state of our home.

And then I yell again.

Because if I am being brutally honest, the state of my home causes me to be overstimulated, reactive, and stressed the fuck out. And its weird, because I never cared about it as a kid or young adult.  It really only started bothering me when I started seeing other peoples homes.

On social media.

And suddenly, it got me wondering.

Does clutter overstimulate me?

Or does the notion that clutter is somehow a shortcoming, overstimulate me?

The short answer for me, is that the clutter and chaos tends to overstimulate me, and I have a hard time regulating my reactions to other things when my living space is out of order.

But the more I really think about it, I wonder if it actually is not the clutter itself at all, but rather what the clutter represents.

Am I overwhelmed because my house isn’t organized? Or am I overwhelmed because I feel like it should be organized and it is not?

Fast forward to today: I have over one hundred messages from moms who talk about how they feel guilty when they are not cleaning.

 And it hit me in the fucking gut.

We are all the same.

And we all need to STOP.

I felt so sad for everyone who submitted these messages.  While at the same time agreeing whole heartedly because I feel the exact same way.

So the point of this blog is this:

We are not doing this anymore.

And here is the 3 step solution I am giving myself, and hope you will too.

1.) I will do one project per day

(ex: Monday I will clear out the guest room clutter

Tuesday I will empty and put away two laundry baskets of clothes

Wednesday I will do the pantry

Thursday I will tidy the closets

Friday I will sit down and watch bravo)

2.) I will dedicate one-two hours each day that I tidy and work on the home.  I will set an alarm when I am starting and when I am done.  And when I am done, its time for the next thing.  Because I am not defined by cleaning this never clean home.

3.) I will instill 20 minutes per day where my whole family helps with tasks.  I will pick one time each day and they will do the tasks that need done, and the reward for doing this without whining is staying up ten minutes late even though I really just made your bed time seem earlier than it is.

This is my solution for now.

this is the worst blog post.  But hey, we’re in this together. Comment if you want more blog posts of solidarity.