Cleanliness is next to Godliness

Or so someone once said. Here is something not many people know about me. I LOVE the idea of being organized and time managed and having a clean house. Notice I said the idea of it. The actual doing is a bit different. I can sit and make beautiful cleaning charts that are wonderfully organized, and I love doing that. I print them out, sometimes on pretty paper, sometimes I am going for the utilitarian look and its just plain white, and I never ever follow them. But I love making them. I love looking on a piece of paper and seeing my day divided up into little half hour increments showing where everyone should be and what they should be doing. It gives me shivers up my spine. I love the idea of knowing that at 8:00 I jump in the shower, dressed and ready by 9. At noon its lunch with it cleaned up at 12:30, and at 4:00 every day I start dinner. At least thats how it looks on paper.

Reality is, I shower whenever I can find the will to do it, we eat lunch when my kids are complaining about starving to death (their words, not mine), and I start dinner about 10 minutes before a hungry child is do at an activity. Oh, and the cleaning up part? Well, thats why it takes me so long to start dinner, because I'm cleaning up from dinner last night and lunch before I can cook tonight. I know I'm not the only one that lives this way, but I am the only one that will probably be brave enough to tell the truth about it. Other people can have their dream worlds where dinners at 5, kids baths at 6, bed by 7, and mom and dad have a nice relaxing evening before drifting off into uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours at 10:00.

Maybe someday, I'll live in that dream world too. Until then, I'll keep sending hungry kids to gymnastics, laundry won't always be done on Monday, and I will keep making my beautiful schedules. But this is who I am, and you can either love me or not. Judge me if you want to, but in the end I'm pretty happy with me.