Sometimes I will sit and reflect on me, pre-kids, just after Mike and I got married and we moved into our first home and just laugh at myself. I was so obsessive and anal about cleaning that I would barely even sit down to watch a show in the evening with my new husband. I was always “SOOO BUSY.” Ha!
I didn’t even know busy.
A lot has changed since then, (four kids, careers and a move later), and I have been through a lot, especially after adding each child to our family. My expectations have definitely been adjusted, and although my house is rarely spotless, I feel like I am doing a pretty good job.
Exhibit A – Photos I just took of my home in it’s current state
I’ve started to get in the habit of listening to a chatty YouTube video when driving in my car kids-free, and one this morning, on my way home from Walmart had me nodding my head in agreement constantly.
It was a video of Anna Saccone answering some questions from viewers. As a mom of three, she had some great insight into motherhood. Here are my favourite takeaways…
She talked about how she hasn’t felt depression sink in with her second, or third kids because she doesn’t have as much time to sit and over-think.
I couldn’t agree with this more. When people ask me about having four kids, my answer is, with one kid it’s hard and you overthink all the time. Plus if there is a lull in time you think you should be singing a song, be making homemade baby food, or reading a book. When you aren’t doing those things you feel guilty for putting your feet up.
When you have more than one kid, you are busy, in fact you feel like you are on a hamster wheel, but it isn’t nearly as hard and you don’t over analyze every decision.
I can’t tell you how many times I say to myself, when moving from one child’s crisis to the next child, “well kid, you’re going to be okay because you have to be okay, there are other people waiting in line.” I swear my kids as a litter of puppies are way happier than when my son was an only child.
Anna also talked about trying to keep her house clean and everything in it’s place. She said she’s let go a bit because let’s face it, she has three kids and six dogs. You could drive yourself crazy trying to keep your house spotless with that much chaos.
So, when the mess starts to really bug her, she reminds herself that she loves her kids more than a clean house.
So simple, yet such great advice!
Watch her video for these, plus more great bits of insight into motherhood…
Recently, I confessed a dirty little secret of mine on Nesting Story’s 
After years of trying to clean it, clear it and announce that there would be no more crap dumping to the rest of my family and constantly failing, I finally realized I needed to approach this problem in a different way. 
I knew I could never fully keep this place clear of clutter. As a busy family of six, we sometimes just need to put stuff up and out of the way. So I brainstormed and finally came up with an idea that is so genius, it has now been working for our family for a couple of months!
Now, when someone dumps their sunglasses, trading cards or lip gloss on the counter, I just quickly pop it into their box. When the boxes are full, I hand them out and ask the owner of the box to put the contents away. BAM! I am telling you, this actually works!
I made the decision to evict everything Play Doh from the cupboard and store them inside a closet, in a cart on wheels. Seeing that I have to be in a particularly good and stress-free mood to break out the Play Doh and the mess that goes with it, having it out of our kitchen made a lot of sense.
I then assigned a shelf to each kid. I gave them letter trays to keep drawings and school work in. I also created an a space for colouring books and their art supplies container to go.
