Welcome to Calming Chaos!
I am new to blogging and I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read what I write, give me lots of good feedback and share part in the journey I'm on to calm the chaos in my life. It amazes me that no matter how hard I try to maintain my home, I feel like I'm in a never ending battle with clutter and chaos all around me. It is true that as soon as they could crawl, my sweet children learned how to pull things out and spread them about the whole house at a feverishly insane pace. Which makes it nearly impossible for me to keep my house respectable for company let alone show quality. Now, don't get me wrong...I don't blame my kids, I mean after all they're exploring their world, in this case our house, and doing what most kids do. It's just so hard to keep up with them! If I followed them around all day long and picked up everything they dropped, sure my house may look like a model home, but that's no life for me and all my children would learn is that Mommy is really good at picking up "my" mess! Hurray for Mommy, the 24 hour a day maid!
Well I am not a full-time maid in my own home and my children should just learn to pick up after themselves, right? That's a great idea in theory, but learning life skills, even ones as simple as picking up after yourself take time to learn. I mean, hey, I'm still working on that one! So maybe a compromise needs to be made. Not so much a compromise with the kids as a compromise with myself. It's okay for the house to have some mess during the day. I mean we do live in our home and there is a lot more to living then sitting down on the couch and not touching anything. However, children do need to take some responsibility for their mess. Now I said "some" because remember life skills take time to become habits. I don't expect my 11 month old to pick up after herself at all because she's too young to even know what a mess really is. If I asked her to clean up her own mess, she'd probably smile and laugh at me completely oblivious to what I was asking of her. My three and four year old on the other hand can "help" clean things up. They can put aways toys or games they take out and wipe up messes they make with supervision and sometimes a little help. They sometimes even ask for help cleaning some things up and depending on what needs to be cleaned up and how busy I am I may step in and help.
I suppose the thing I struggle with is actually following up on what the kids are doing and enforcing certain rules in our home. If I don't teach my children to put things back after they are done playing with them, who will? It's up to me to follow up with my children and make sure they put things back where they belong. By the way, any parent can tell you, just because a child knows they should put something away when they're done using it doesn't always mean they actually will. Ah, laziness and distractions do make that difficult for children and adults alike. Like I said earlier, I even have a hard time picking up after myself sometimes. I have good intentions to be sure, but honestly when the house starts getting messy and cluttered I don't even notice if I've left anything out among the piles. It all sort of blends together like a chameleon blending into it surroundings. New clutter and old clutter seem to become one and I can no longer tell the difference between old messes and new ones. So here I am on my journey and I invite you to come along. I'm working on forming new habits everyday that will help me calm the chaos in my life. Thank you again and enjoy!
Well I am not a full-time maid in my own home and my children should just learn to pick up after themselves, right? That's a great idea in theory, but learning life skills, even ones as simple as picking up after yourself take time to learn. I mean, hey, I'm still working on that one! So maybe a compromise needs to be made. Not so much a compromise with the kids as a compromise with myself. It's okay for the house to have some mess during the day. I mean we do live in our home and there is a lot more to living then sitting down on the couch and not touching anything. However, children do need to take some responsibility for their mess. Now I said "some" because remember life skills take time to become habits. I don't expect my 11 month old to pick up after herself at all because she's too young to even know what a mess really is. If I asked her to clean up her own mess, she'd probably smile and laugh at me completely oblivious to what I was asking of her. My three and four year old on the other hand can "help" clean things up. They can put aways toys or games they take out and wipe up messes they make with supervision and sometimes a little help. They sometimes even ask for help cleaning some things up and depending on what needs to be cleaned up and how busy I am I may step in and help.
I suppose the thing I struggle with is actually following up on what the kids are doing and enforcing certain rules in our home. If I don't teach my children to put things back after they are done playing with them, who will? It's up to me to follow up with my children and make sure they put things back where they belong. By the way, any parent can tell you, just because a child knows they should put something away when they're done using it doesn't always mean they actually will. Ah, laziness and distractions do make that difficult for children and adults alike. Like I said earlier, I even have a hard time picking up after myself sometimes. I have good intentions to be sure, but honestly when the house starts getting messy and cluttered I don't even notice if I've left anything out among the piles. It all sort of blends together like a chameleon blending into it surroundings. New clutter and old clutter seem to become one and I can no longer tell the difference between old messes and new ones. So here I am on my journey and I invite you to come along. I'm working on forming new habits everyday that will help me calm the chaos in my life. Thank you again and enjoy!
posted by calmingchaos at
8:55 AM
1 Comments
