Messes Everywhere At Home

This last Christmas, I felt like we didn’t get the kids many presents. It was very mild, yet the wrapping paper was still quite a mess. Then we had my daughter’s birthday. I took the day off to clean the house, and it took a good 4 hours to get the living room clean, even though it had been clean just a few days before my daughter’s birthday. The mess at home can feel so uncontrollable.

Then I realized that we needed a Chinese proverb for this. Similar to the saying, "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime," having kids at home is like trying to clean a pot while you're cooking. Cleaning a boiling pot of spaghetti sauce doesn’t work well; the sauce will splatter seconds after you clean the sides of the pot. Once you've eaten your spaghetti, though, you clean the pot and realize the sauce is gone.

Our kids are like spaghetti sauce. They are cooking all day at home, and we can clean it, but it’s going to be a mess the next day, and that is okay! I tell my wife every day when she says I didn’t get much done: “Well, the children are happy and loved, and that is all that matters.” Then we all clean together, and it's so much more enjoyable because we aren’t mad at each other over the messes. Next time you’re at home and feeling stressed about the mess, don’t. Some day the house will be clean and quiet, and then you will miss the little ones. Then you may have infrequent messes from the grandkids; life moves on, and new messes will come.

Good luck with this week with your messes, and thanks for reading!