Messes and cleaning

UMy house is bigger. Much bigger than the shoebox in Nebraska.

So yeah, it does get messy but the mess is spread out so it's honestly not as bad which makes it so much better. I can have a mountain of dishes next to the sink but the rest of the kitchen can still be clean and functional. It's incredible!

Someone posted on Facebook that they should use a rake to clean up a toy mess. And with me being pregnant and already hating to bend over and pick everything up i was like "YES. I am so doing this"

literally the pile I made the first day I did this, it was THAT bad, ha

I now have an indoor rake I use to clean up the upstairs family room and kitchen and it makes clean up so much easier. Then all I have to do is clean up one pile! So I can take all the shoes to the shoe closet at once. All the toys to the playroom at once. All the kitchen items that go in the sink to the sink at once. And it all gets done so much faster.

Bonus, when I'm feeling like there's too much to do and the kids will just make cleaning up worse we play the "M&M game". Essentially I give them a task or something to put away, they do it they get an M&M! And my lazy bum stays on the stairs the whole time. We all love it. You should try it.

As I've watched my children over the past few weeks I look at them make messes sometimes knowing and sometimes purposefully and I"m just like "Oh my gosh, that's all you guys do is make messes" In a matter of 5 minutes they can have 30+ items strewn over the kitchen and family room easily. The babies love trying on shoes and walking around the house with them, so just like that 5 new paris of shoes are all over the floor that no one even used! They pull down the kitchen towels on the oven just because they don't play with them, it's just something they can pull down so they do. I watched Max pull out 5 books off the kids bookshelf and just walk away. I've seen them put their hands on the counter and just start pulling random crap down in hopes that there might be something cool up there like markers or candy. I got a new chair cover for our rocking chair (bc it was HIDEOUSLY ravaged by spills stains and pen marks and could never be cleaned) the first week I put it on there were new permanent marker scribbles on the side, and then 2 weeks later someone added pen scribbles to it too. Thanks goodness I bought a machine washable one, not the absolute cutest but so much more realistic and functional for our family of savages. 

The messes continue everyday without slowing down.  There are so many more in my head but I'm too tired to write them, ha. The other day I started cry-whining to Casey while cleaning up that the twins NEVER STOP. They literally are like little tornadoes that just go from one place to the next without a break. It's exhausting cleaning up after them constantly but it's life and we're pushing forward.

I've found myself every time someone makes a mess I think in my head or sometimes even say out loud "I am patient, I am kind, I am loving" I have to remember these are just little kids still. The twins aren't even 2, Max not yet 4, they're just learning when they make a mess or break something it is NEVER to purposefully make you upset or mad, they're just learning not to be clumsy and results of their actions. A mess can just be cleaned up, really, not that big of a deal. Even Max is 1,000,000 times cleaner and more helpful than the twins. So in just 2 years the twins will be there as well!

I always feel like I need to vacuum our carpet, being whitish it shows everything. The kids love vacuuming, I hate that they love it because they make it last about 15 minutes longer than needed with crying to hold my vacuum, fighting over the kid vacuum, unplugging the vacuum, or just standing in front of me, ugh.

laundry forever

In an attempt to make my life more organized and cleaned but not feel like I get behind on tasks or wear myself out and do it all in one day I've made a cleaning schedule specifically to my family and home's needs. First I'm going to see how well it works (if I'm lacking in any areas around the house, if stuff needs to be done more often or not as often) and then hopefully I'll get around to making it cute on the computer and printing it out. I got the bones of my cleaning chart from littlegreennotebook but how I made my list was write down a list of things that needed to be done daily, weekly, monthly. The weekly ones I just started going through and assigning them to a random day trying to keep it even. Friday is when I rotate through the swing day list getting to each item once a month.