I love drop in visitors. Absolutely love them. I am touched that people would be comfortable enough in our friendship to come over unannounced and hopefully accept us as we are.
However, on a day like today, it can backfire...
Although I keep a clean and hygienic house, I often find myself keeping a very MESSY house. It does get tidied often, several times a day, but just never all at the same time. I think most mothers of toddlers will understand just how quickly two little tornadoes can transform a formerly orderly room into a bombsite in minutes. Sometimes it is like fighting a force of nature.
Let me paint the picture:
Our playroom is right next to the front door, and it is usually mid-adventure. The hatrack, too, is right next to the front door. It occasionally gets pulled over, spreading hats and jackets and ephemera across the hallway. When we get home from an outing, backpacks and bags are usually dropped briefly at the front door, next to newly discarded shoes and socks and lunch boxes and perhaps a stray stroller. And finally, the girls are still quite messy eaters, especially yoghurt, and especially when we came home in a starving hurry having just dropped our gear in the front hall....
And sometimes these all coalesce into a perfect storm of front door messiness, which is, of course, when the most judgmental people I know decided to drop by. It's Murphy's Law.
And I hate the looks on their faces. The barely muted disdain, as they step over the fallen hatrack, glance into the ankle deep playroom, skirt the dropped bags and see my babies yoghurt covered faces. It hurts. And it takes a great deal of internal fortitude to remind myself that no, this isn't life here normally, and that my family are all happy with the way I do my duty as a homemaker.
They haven't any children, yet. Perhaps I can lend them my whirling dervishes for a day and see if their front hall remains immaculate then?
I have a beautiful friend, that says when I am apologising for the state of my home......that..." this wont last forever..."...and " the toys, and all that goes with it that are everywhere mean that you are blessed to have children...'...I know many women that would trade places in an instant for our tornadoes...and for those who frown or look down on a home that is lived in and loved in well, what can I say.....its there problem, not yours....on a lighter note, its when your children open the front door to friends and let them in while you are in a semi state of undress that you should worry about, not the mess!!!!!! I am speaking from experience!
ReplyDeleteI had a friend point out that we "are raising kids not furniture." I've since taken that to mean a perfect house, a clean car, etc. Don't worry, one day the people will have kids of their own, and ask, "what on earth just happened?"
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