The Challenge

I do not own a house, I am lucky enough to be owned by a home. A home where we live, love, play and create. With such a joyfully creative clan, I choose to encourage their masterpiece rather than worry about their mess. This becomes a bit of a hiccup in two instances.

Sometimes my mind has had enough of the clutter and needs some clarity at which time everyone pitches in and cleans, cleans, cleans.


Once in a while I do something completely erratic like host a home party. It is then that I feel the real chaos. Not the chaos of my home. My home is not filthy but it is most certainly lived in. When someone ropes me into a home party I feel the need to present my house as something it is not. Picture perfect. Magazine spread ready.


I'm hosting one of those events this evening. Ugh! Why oh why does the word "no" escape me? So I'm stressing away about my house and all the preparations for the "perfect" evening. Bah humbug. I don't like perfection. The stress over making my house seem like something is not has been weighing on me. This morning I decided that rather than presenting the perfect house, I will present a loving home. In my eyes, it is the better of the two.

I looked up some quotes on housework. Then, I created one of my own!

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, 1966

Our house is clean enough to be healthy,

and dirty enough to be happy.  ~Author Unknown

We labor to make a house a home, then every time we're expecting visitors, we rush to turn it back into a house.  ~Robert Brault

If the shelves are dusty and the pots don't shine,
it's because I have better things to do with my time.
~Author Unknown

 

One cannot create a masterpiece 

without first creating a mess. ~Lynn Retzlaff