The Not-So-Organized Mom

To survive being the mother of a large family, you either have to be the super organized kind of mom, or nearly  the opposite, the laid-back kind. There’s just too much going on to stay in the middle of the road. With any family, but perhaps more noticeably in a home with lots of kids, mom either has to keep all the schedules, tasks and needs in order, or she has to be able to tolerate some amount of disorder.

I am the second type, but I’ve never liked the term “laid back.” It sounds like that mom is lazy, or literally laying down on the job. I prefer the term calm, casual or maybe unflappable.

The super-organized moms are the ones you see in magazines and reality shows. In those households, everything hums along, chores are cheerfully done, school work is fun and creative, everyone is in line and the rows are straight. I know families like this–they do exist–and I admire them tremendously. I love the idea of it.

We’re not that family. It causes me more stress to keep my home that way than it does to live with a little clutter, some dust bunnies, and dishes in the sink. So, a big hairy dog will rush you at the door, the bathroom may have toothpaste smeared on the mirror and dinner will likely be running a few minutes late, but we’re happy and healthy.

It’s not that we don’t try. It’s just that we can’t quite get ahead of it. I’m sure I should have delegated more responsibility, and maybe I should have doled out harsher consequences for missing dish duty.

My kids have turned out to be good roommates, though, which is some measure of what they learned at home. I hear them complaining that they are the only ones in their house or apartment that do dishes, vacuum or clean the bathroom. This is a great mystery to me, because they were not doing this at home with any regularity.

I’m so relieved that I didn’t completely ruin them by not having the Good Housekeeping dream family. I suspect that maybe the organizational level of the home doesn’t really matter that much. We don’t want the health department to have to intervene, but it seems a more casual approach may be good enough.

Every family is somewhere on the organizational and neatness scale. Your home reflects your family’s personality and values, and doesn’t have to look like a magazine spread to be great.

I’m not the person to come to for how-to’s on how to get more done in a day, or how to finally conquer your clutter. If you want to talk about how crazy and exhausting and amazing it is to be a parent, or about getting through hard times with your kids one day, one hour or one prayer at a time, I have lots to say. With so many kids, I have plenty of experience with that.