Our house is a total mess

Constantly.

One of the many great challenges associated with allowing these worryingly energetic little people to come ploughing into your life is accepting the fact that you can no longer live the way you did before.

It’s tempting to try and restore order, to maintain control, to keep the house ‘the way it was’ but from personal experience this just ends up leading to vast amounts of added extra stress and frustration. As soon as we gave up trying to keep the house tidy and things a certain way, life got a lot more enjoyable.

I remember when I was around ten years old, I used to go back to my friend’s house after school for dinner and a round of xbox, and I vividly remember a sign on the downstairs bathroom door that read,

“Dull women have immaculate houses“

This particular friend’s house was always full of laughter and love and was always a total mess, with clothes, toys and discarded science projects all over the place, but nobody cared. They were all having such a great time together as a family that it simply didn’t matter what state the house was in.

Twenty years on and I’m relieved to say our own house now looks pretty similar, with ideas and toys overflowing as fast as each other, and we love it. We see friends and family gawking with visible discomfort at the chaos between our four walls, and it’s got to the point where we’re now actually rather proud of it.

I’d like to caveat at this point that it isn’t unsanitary – just horrendously untidy. The important bits – sinks, toilets, work surfaces, table, dishes and ridiculous number of used spoons – were all cleaned at the end of each day to make sure that our home didn’t represent a genuine threat to health, but the toys on the floor? Well, they were less of a priority…

Embrace the madness!

This too shall pass

One day you'll wipe those sticky handprints off the dining room window for the last time, and those teddies will already be in the place you left them last night. Books will sit neatly on the book case and a small part of you will miss those years of relentless, thankless cleaning up after the whirlwind of energy that has since grown up and moved on.

Working on intensive care, I see many parents who would give anything in the world to have the chance to wipe sticky fingers just one more time, or put away reams of books and dolls scattered across a well-loved carpet.

It feels like a punishment right now, but you'll look back fondly on these moments, so if you can muster up the strength to be even a tiny bit grateful for the mess, you won't regret it.