I remember being pregnant for the first time and being told by seasoned parents to not get too hung up on the idea of having a cute, clean house after baby is born. Kids are messy and you’ll go crazy trying to keep up with them 24/7. How hard could it really be to clean up after a miniature human, though? I mean they have such little arms and legs. They couldn’t possibly destroy faster than I can clean, right?

WRONG. Having a child was so sobering. I realized I was scrambling to keep up with everything a lot more than I thought I would. Not only was I having to find a balance between cleaning and caring for a very demanding little human, I was also battling the intense exhaustion new parenting brings. So when I finally got a break from entertaining my baby, I had to choose between catching up on sleep or getting up to clean the house a little. Admittedly, napping won a lot of the time. And falling asleep was not always intentional. There has been many an accidental nap in my short time as a mother, and those can surprisingly be some of the most refreshing naps you’ll ever experience.

Juggling everything definitely got better over time. And so did my sleeping habits, though I still go crappy phases sometimes (like now… Thanks pregnancy). Strangely enough, I feel like I had a way better handle on everything when my second child was born, which you’d think would be way harder than just one child. But the first few months after my second was born was when my house was at its cleanest. Part of it likely had to do with the fact that my sister helped me get the house reasonably clean before she left to go back to her life states away, so I had a much easier time maintaining the house and catching up on chores here and there.

Since then, things have definitely gone downhill. Which is something I think a lot of parents understand. It makes you feel so crappy to get to a point where your lack of healthy time management is exemplified by the state of your house. My world revolves around caring for my children, so places like the living room and their bedroom get first priority when it comes to cleaning because that’s where they play. My room definitely is bottom of my priority list, and you can tell just by looking at it! It’s okay, though. I’m slowly catching up, and I don’t mind if my room is a little messy as long as my kids have a safe space to play and live.

I see a bunch of wives in my area who have to die for adorably decorated houses, and I’m not really sure how they do it! They somehow have clean houses 24/7 and have decoration themes that are so cohesive, their house looks so elegant and expensive to me. Even when I do try to decorate, my house still looks like butt. I tend to gravitate towards functional furniture rather than pretty, and then cheap furniture rather than expensive. So my house right now is just a mishmash of furniture that served a purpose at least one point in time, but none of them match. So yeah… My house is pretty embarrassing, ha. If I can move, I plan on changing that. I have a few cute furniture ideas, but there’s no point in me buying cute things in my current ugly shoebox house. We’ll see if that plan actually works, though. I am still very far away from my goal of making $1000 per month. But I am determined to make this work out. I am tired of living in a small area that my family has completely outgrown, surrounded by people who are so bored with their lives that they feel the need to try to destroy mine. I can do this, and I will do this!