Don't mind the mess...

"Come in" she said, "don't mind the mess", as I step over the threshold to her home, drawing my attention to the suggestingly unkempt surroundings. My eyes flick over every surface as we proceed deeper into the house.

Though I'm not exactly sure what mess she is pertaining too. The haphazardly arranged toys that are within the confines of the baby mat, or the two mugs on the bench next to the kettle - clean & ready for expected company. Even the beds were made in the bedrooms we drifted past.

No piles of washing all over the couch with not-so-fifty-shades underwear & holey socks flauntingly visible, forgotten to be tucked deep into the mountain. Kitchen sink empty of breakfast bowls, no dried weet-bix or puffed up rice bubbles lingering on the table - or under the chairs. Either her children slept in their clothes the night before, or it is their pyjama's I can hear in the washing machine quietly swishing away.

The floors look clean enough to follow the three second rule {for dropped food}, curtains open & windows barely visible - not a smeared hand print or dried up cascading dribble to be seen. 

I think to myself, if this is classed as messy then my house belongs on 'Hoarding - Buried Alive'. Knowing that as I closed the front door to take the minions to school, I was closing the door on pyjama's left on bedroom floors, breakfast bowls un-rinsed & stacked next to the sink, with the dishwasher clean but not yet emptied from the night before. Wet bed sheets & quilts stripped & fermenting in the dirty laundry basket, the washing machine silent. The evidence of packing lunches on the kitchen bench remains & while the dining table is wiped of any solid food matter, cloudy streaks are easily seen & rice bubbles litter Will & Blake's chairs. Our floors, not fit for the three second rule, but clean enough for Clay to escape my hip on.

With that one careless statement, perhaps meant to clear her of any responsibility for a missed mirror streak or mote of dust I may see, but not notice - evaporating from my mind faster than a shopping list. The standard is set. The precedent of expectation which goes both ways.

Weeks later I open our front door to welcome her into our home. With a smile I say "Hi! Come in, don't mind the mess, we've been so busy the last few days I've not had a chance to clean properly." A partial truth. 

We walk down the hallway, past bedrooms & lounge rooms - doors wide open to welcome inspection. Small talk is made while we make our way to the kitchen, where two mugs await next to the kettle & a plate of {store bought} goodies already set out.

What she doesn't know is that I ran around like a blue arsed fly the night before - cleaning toilets, wiping toothpaste off mirrors & polishing windows until I could see my reflection. Washing piles thrown hastily into cupboards, floors swept & quickly mopped. That morning the kids were dropped off at school looking irritated & harassed - because I spent the previous two hours acting like a Drill Sargent. Make your bed! Put your pyjamas in the wash! Whose breakfast bowl is on the table still? Put it in the sink! Rooms tidy! Brush your teeth, make sure you rinse the bathroom sink after! 

Instead of walking each minion to their class, I kiss them good bye & head back to the car before the morning bell has even rung. Eager to gain an extra ten minutes to ensure everything is looking as clean & display home'esque as possible. Not a rice bubble in sight. Super House Wife badge on. 

This became the norm. Doug always knew when I had plans to catch up with someone the next day because the night before instead of sitting next to him on the couch, I would be mopping & folding as much of our Mount Washmore as I could before tiredness set in. 

Then a few months ago I called enough. Our house is our home, not an open door display house. I was sick of the falseness, the illusion, the expectation. I wanted to look forward to catching up with friends, not feeling annoyed that I had to sacrifice my quiet evening to make sure every surface was free of minion prints & milk spots. If a friend knocked unexpectedly on our door I didn't want to chat at the front door to hide the lunch dishes in the sink, the unfolded washing dominating the couch, unmade beds & the dozens of shoes almost certainly to be scattered through various rooms.

I also do not want other women to feel the same way. 

Now I'll still say "come in, don't mind the mess." But you will know see exactly what mess I am excusing. Whether it be the crumbs on the bench, the dining table I'm wiping down before we sit, the glass door opaque with hundreds of hand prints or the baby toys & action figurines that lay abandoned on the floor. The real mess. 

Pop over for a cuppa, come for the company. You're welcome any time, just mind the washing.

Boys & their toys

Have boys, they said. 

It'll be fun, they said.

{ok, we didn't get a say in the whole boy:girl ratio, but work with me here}

Boys are awesome. Our boys are awesome. They are loud. They are hilarious. They are adventurous & cute as puppies when they are up to no good. You know that saying 'silence is golden'? Nuh-uh. If the house is quiet it's a telling sign they are up to no good...True. ALL true.

Another truth about boys - they make your toilet smell like an alley behind the local pub. No lie. 

We do toilet checks on the hour every hour - or after each pit stop, to comply with standard OH&S recommendations. A wet toilet floor is a slippery toilet floor, & no one wants to land in someone else's pee. Or even your own pee.

I was aware that the younger (& not so younger) male species may need reminding to refine their aim. I was prepared for drips on the toilet seat & few a strays on the floor. What I was not prepared for was the proverbial showers that would dry in yellow droplets all over the seat & lid. Neither was I expecting to regularly find Lake Bonney on our toilet floor. I kid you not. I had no idea that so much wee could come from such a small person in one trip.

With four boys taking regular jaunts to the lavatory, one of whom has a low capacity, hyperactive bladder meaning he is nearly always busting straight off the mark. Some days I clean the toilet floor more than I load the washing machine.

Over the last four months or so it seemed to exacerbate, likely due to the school holidays & with now four boys using the commode on a rotating door basis. Fed up with having to resort to a towel to clean up the initial mess, going through rolls of toilet paper & bottles of disinfectant on a weekly basis I called all the boys to a toilet door meeting. Mum was serious.

Rule #1
When you go to the toilet, hold your penis! 
Many times I had busted Jack just thrusting his hips forward & then refining his aim as he went. Which was never successful, & often by the time his aim was on target he'd run out steam, so to speak. By then it was too late.

Rule #2
Put the toilet seat UP!
You can't drip wee on the toilet seat if it isn't in your way. {I didn't bother asking them to put it back down once finished. I learnt long ago to pick my battles & right now putting the seat down is very low on the list of parenting warfare.}

Rule #3
Watch where you are weeing.
How do you know if you are meeting water with water when you are staring at the ceiling or looking over your shoulder? 
To reiterate - hold & watch, from beginning to end.

Rule #4
If you make a mess, clean it up. If you need help, ask.


We went back to basics, even though we had covered all of these back at the beginning when they first began running around in jocks. With these rules {verbally back in place} I was hopeful. 
Hopeful my days of soggy socks from stepping in some one's wee were over. Wiping seats, behind lids, walls & floors with disinfectant could be done less than five times a day. Minimum.
For a few days it helped. Lake Bonney never returned & but for a few splashes here & there, it seemed they were taking their responsibilities as boys seriously. Then every now & again I would find a puddle returned, or the beginnings of a yellow shower over a seat that hadn't been lifted. I was able to rule out Ben from the offending list. That still left Jack, Blake & Will. It appeared each of them were guilty, in random order, of breaking one {or all of} the toilet commandments.

Through constant reminding & follow up checks, we're slowly getting to a clean & visitor safe lavatory. Most of the time anyway. If they make a mess they do clean it up - to the best of their ability. The seat & lid now both stay down, so if they need to pee they lift both instead of aiming over the seat. Every boy is holding their hose & watching where they are aiming - a big win.

Seriously, I never imagined getting boys to use & leave the toilet in a clean state would be such an on going drama. We were not lazy with their toilet training or have low standards of personal care & hygiene. It just seems that they are too busy & find the need to vacate their bladder a time consuming interruption to their days. So it was done as quickly & as haphazardly as possible. After all there are soccer balls to kick, bikes to jump & scooters to ride. Who has time to go to the toilet anyways.

In a predominantly XY gene'd large family two toilets are not a luxury.

They are a necessity.

What does a Mum do with forty eight hours of minion free time?

Last week five of the minions went to Grandma's house for a big sleepover. 

Two nights. 

Three days. Almost. 

Oh em gee. 

My hypothetical "What I would do if I had two whole days of no kids" became a reality. I could have wet my pants I was that excited. The only times Doug & I have had more than twenty four hours minus our minions have been when we were welcoming another little one into our tribe & a few years ago when we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary with a two night get away. Though Will wasn't yet a year old, so our packing list included a porta-cot & a baby.

Back to last week though. 

With a kick in my step & a tear in my eye I kissed Ben, Rianan, Jack, Blake & Will good bye, squeezing little bodies tight enough to last us all until Friday afternoon, before driving Clay & I back home to our quiet, empty house.

I had planned to sap every last minute out of my {mostly} minion free days. The to-do list was nearly as long enough to rival our weekly shopping list. Furniture to sand back & re-paint, toy rooms to set up & bedrooms to change around, endless uninterrupted hours curled up on the couch reading with a hot chocolate in hand, walk in robes to de-clutter & drawers to sort through, cafes to visit & movies to watch during the day.

So what did I do with my first three hours? Be prepared to be vastly disappointed...

Dishes & Facebook.

What is wrong with me. 

Without my little anchors I was lost. Adrift in the sea of freedom. 

Even Clay was misplaced by the stillness of quiet & solitude. No brothers around building wooden block towers for Clay to swipe with his chubby little hands & his doting sister no where to be found despite how extensive he searched & how loud he tried to call out. The one on one time with Clay was precious, but it was not the same playing peek a boo with just Mummy. Kisses goodnight for only two people instead of making our way around the couches to receive seven goodnight kisses. There was no one to chase around the house or to laugh when he flashed his cheeky, toothy grin.

But oh my, the house stayed clean. No need to enter the laundry or hear the chiming end to another load of washing. The dishwasher was run only once.  The broom stood idle & the vacuum gathered cobwebs & dust instead of sucking them up. The mop even had a chance to dry before the next use.

When Doug came home from work we were able to carry through uninterrupted conversations. This is unheard of. We went out to dinner {with Clay} two nights in a row. Two nights. Consecutively. 

Friday morning Clay & I didn't get out of bed until ten in the morning. While it didn't erase the duffel bags under my eyes, rolling out of bed when the sun was already high & shining bright certainly felt luxurious & indulgent.

The old buffet cabinet I planned to re paint is still sitting in the shed awaiting it's restoration, there were no barista made latte's, bedroom doors remained tightly shut, walk in robes looked exactly the same as they had Wednesday morning & no movies were watched, day or night.

However I did manage a few uninterrupted hours of reading before the change of pace kicked back into V8 Supercar speed.

It seems forty eight hours wasn't long enough. Then again, maybe it was. Our lives were never meant to be that quiet.

NaBloPoMo status failed

November saw me committing to posting every day over here at HomM. Over on the right hand side in the blog archives, under November there should be (30) right next to it. I'm only seeing (7). 

Fail.

When I signed up for NaBloPoMo  {National Blog Promotion Month} I thought it would be, well not easy, though maybe not as hard as folding the washing. Folding washing is a tortuous task. As far as I'm concerned it sucks hairy dogs balls. I'd rather clean windows. Hang on, that's not true, especially if you could see the present state of our windows & the height of our clean washing piles. 

I have a better analogy, I figured blogging everyday would be like cooking everyday. While it has to be done, some days you can choose to cook up a three ingredient spaghetti bolognaise (thank you Dolmio jar sauce) other days may find you serving up a roast pork with crackling, golden roast potatoes & crispy edged pumpkin, honey drizzled carrots, peas & beans tossed through melted garlic butter. With sticky date muffins topped with warm caramel sauce to pop that last button on your jeans.

For each day of November I planned to have proper posts where I would ramble about whatever hot topic was going viral, or about our minions as they are a constant source of inspiration & daily exasperation. A full roast dinner affair. Then those 'full bellied posts' would be interspersed with 'photo a day' snippets, or a recipe for muffins & cookies that find their way from the cooling racks to mere crumbs in ten minutes flat. Two minutes if I'm not watching those sneaky little hands. These would have been the 'three ingredient posts'.  

Then life happened & procrastination bit me on the arse, pigs might fly moments of rest found me on the couch instead of at the computer. Plus the kids needed to be fed fifty thousand times a day - not kidding. Doug expected to be able to wear clean clothes & I got sick of stepping on dirt & grit. Our exciting, riveting lives carried on full steam ahead NaBloPoMo or not. 

Unfulfilled plans & fabulous unexecuted ideas are no stranger to me. Failing to deliver on the daily blogging front is not even close to the first time I've planned to do something that never happens. It also will not be the last. The only times I planned to do something & actually followed through, without fail or procrastination, was giving birth to our six little squawkers. Not that there was any choice.

On the fridge there are three To-Do lists - one for the immediate do today/tomorrow, another is the must-get-done-soon cleaning/organising/decluttering list, the last is projects/plans I want to do when I get a spare day or two. You know, sometime before the year 2024. Midnight is also a popular time for inspiration to hit. I'll lie there thinking of everything I want to get done the next morning, freeing me up for the rest of the day - all in between school drop offs & picks ups, cutting crusts of sandwiches for three year olds, slicing fruit into baby friendly fingers, stepping on toys, picking up toys, putting away toys, loading the washing machine, turning on the dryer, mopping little boy urine up off the toilet floor, de-fusing toddler tantrums...where was I? Oh that's right, mentally composing a get-your-shit-together-in-the-morning list at midnight. Then 7am rolls around, & I roll over in bed wishing the kids didn't have to go to school so I didn't have to get up. That midnight inspiration flies out the window at the hands of 9am's procrastination. 

It seems when I decide to commit to something habits from my high school days suddenly plague me, many a night before an essay was due would find me furiously scribbling away trying to make hasty indecipherable notes transform into a 1000 word essay. If there is a deadline sudden onset of last minute-itis & procrastination fever would always strike...oh look a diary filled with poems & frivolous, fleeting declarations of love from 1998, let's waste five hours pouring over every page. 

As for unexecuted ideas, well there is an outfit of a creamy beige dress with purple tights that has never been worn. Though perhaps that is for the better. In store it seemed amuhzing however after getting home it seemed my enthusiasm had been left behind on the change room floor. Unless you count that in store try on, it has never been worn. I blame that purchase on those crazy post natal hormones & the fact my fashion choices were no longer dictated by the beach ball impersonating abdomen I had been sporting two months earlier. 

The list of fruitless intentions is long - 
- Packets of hair rollers used once in an unsuccessful attempt to create voluptuous waves.
- Untouched circular knitting needles & balls of wool to make beanies. Along with several patterns bookmarked or Pinterested. Because it seems easier to relearn how to knit a beanie on circular needles than to quickly crochet another one. Totally makes sense.
- While we're on the topic of Pinterest, my crafty/foodie/kids activities/decorating inspiration folders are bursting with tutorials & recipes I whole heartedly intend to use one day in the near future. Just like the other millions of time poor, inspiration rich Pinterest followers.
- Bottles of japanese rice wine, boxes of pastry mix, packets of lentils & split peas going dusty & out of date in the pantry from a recipe never cooked.   
- Old glassless photo frames sitting behind a cabinet, waiting for the day I wipe them down, paint them pretty & hang them up in an abstract yet totally pulled together look. {That I can never seem to quite pull together on the wall the way I saw in my mind or in someone else's house.}
- A $140 hair curling device I purchased after reading raving reviews, I have only used twice. Because when it comes down to sleep or pretty hair the sleep will win. Every. Single. Time.
     
Seriously I could go on. We're all the same though. There are so many 'things' we want to do - house projects to start or complete, recipes to try, places to see one day both near & far, Christmas shopping to do, friends to catch up with before another year is celebrated out with the new one cheered in. 

I'm not sorry I couldn't keep up with everyone else participating in thirty days of blogging, one month soon I'll commit again with the hopes of being able to stick to it. Maybe I'll be successful next time & you'll get the roast dinner posts along with the simpler posts of photos & food in between. 

Oh, & if the mention of those delicious sticky date muffins had your stomach growling & your taste buds craving that caramel gooey goodness, I promise I'll put the recipe up this week. Pinky promise.

 Then again life may happen.

Post script from Doug, when informed of my intentions to blog every day during November "if you planned to blog everyday we would have all starved to death & I would have been wearing the same undies for ten days straight. I'm glad you didn't."

Well, I didn't think it would have been that bad. Ben knows how to make toast & macaroni.