(Not) Having it All Together

Yesterday Kim over at It's a Vertical Life posted briefly on the challenge shoes place on their life at home.  In response, I pointed out how awesome I am at keeping our shoes organized, if I do say so myself.  She responded, cracking mie up.  Go check it out.  I love this woman - you should follow her.  Really you should and thank mie later.

So - here they are - our shoes all perfectly in line.

 And I say hush to all you Type As out there who are pointing out that they are NOT perfectly in line because they aren't lined up by size and color and why on Earth are mom's shoes in with the kids instead of in her ginormous shoe closet.  Hush I say.  I don't want you encouraging the Type A in mie to try and tear mie down from the inside.

So as you can see, I totally have this shoe thing down in my house.  The kids are pretty good at putting their shoes away like this when they take them off, or if not them at least when I remind them that they need to put their shoes away.  This is in our main hallway, across from the bottom of the stairs, kind of in the center of it all so my kids always know where their shoes are and they don't need to scatter through the house to go get their shoes from (closets, etc.) when we have -3 minutes to leave the house.  My shoes don't usually go there but I was cleaning up and lazy so they ended here last night.  We don't worry about how many shoes each kid has downstairs as long as they are nicely lined up here.  When they line gets too long (the length of the wall) we narrow down to 1 favorite per kid and put all the rest away upstairs in their closets.  Eventually the line gets long again and we start over.  This system works really well for us.

BUT, lest we get proud over at Mie's house, let me share with you what you see when you turn around 180 to look at the living room:

No, it's not as bad as it could be and yes some of that laundry is mie catching up from all of the stuff the boys brought with them last week when they joined us (seriously - each had 25-30 t-shirts, not counting long-sleeved or the stuff I have on the back of the couches needing to get hung up!).  If I'm honest with you - the couches look like this about 75% of the time.  I always have laundry going when I'm home.  I don't hate laundry - I actually like doing laundry if I don't have to put it away - but the reality is I don't have time to sit and go through the entire laundry cycle in one sitting.  So, it ends up looking like this.

BUT, notice the mantle.  Here's another picture in case you missed it:

"So..." you say...well, until St. Patrick's Day it looked like this:

Yes - those are my Christmas decorations still up through St. Patrick's day.  I'm mighty proud of myself for breaking down Sunday and getting them put away, finally. (in a box in the office, not actually upstairs).

Notice the laundry on the couch.  I have no idea when this picture was taken but I assure you those are different piles than what was there last night.  More proof that is really what my house looks like most of the time.  And, dear Type A, don't go comparing the mantle pictures closely and finding the snowman in the middle of my "After" picture.  Just don't do it.  Clearly I missed the snowman as I sat down to pat myself on the back for finally cleaning up Christmas 3 months later.  I won't tell you that I didn't even notice until I looked at the picture more than 24 hours later.  

Furthermore - if you look at my kitchen it looks like this:

That pile o' crap on the island has taken up permanent residence.  Like the shoes, when it gets too big to stay in one pile I go through it, weed it out to a bare minimum, and then start the cycle over again.  That is the 2nd or 3rd pile of dishes in the sink waiting to be done.  We fill the dishwasher at least once a day and the sink is kind of like a bus stop shelter for dishes waiting for the next load.  Hand wash?  Only my copper pots and pans and stoneware.  At least the dishes on the counter are clean and the visible counters are sanitized.

The turtle tank is the light to the right of the picture.  It is by sheer luck it's not pictured.  I'll go ahead and tell you the moss has started to grow...

SO, long story made longer - judge for yourself whether we have it all together.  Our house is safe and sanitized for the kids but I make no apologies for the lack of complete organization in my home if you stop by for a random visit - or really even if it's planned.  I choose to worry more about reading with my kids, taking them on outings, and letting them live their lives rather than pay attention to the color of the grout or whether the baseboards have been scrubbed recently.  My kids are happy and our family is in the perpetual process of healing.  That's just the way it is.