Housewife

>My mom was a stay at home mom and for as long as I can remember, I wanted to do that too. To me, being a stay at home mom means I have the following responsibilities: care for Dylan, clean the house, do everyone’s laundry, put everyone’s laundry away, cook dinner, and try to look somewhat decent when my husband comes home from work. This is my definition of a stay at home mom because that is what my mom did with what seemed like ease.

So, if this is the job description of a stay at home mother then, I should be fired. I am not meeting any deadlines… I am falling behind on laundry – the last load of laundry I did is still sitting in a pile not put away from last week, I haven’t actually cleaned at all in the past few weeks, I make dinner maybe once a week with Andy figuring something out for dinner the rest of the time while I try to get Dylan down for bed, and, when Dylan wakes up at 6AM every morning, Andy gets up with him to let me sleep in for an hour. All I do is deal with Dylan all night (most of the time without asking Andy to help) – which usually means I’m getting up to feed him two or three times – and all day and I usually manage to get a shower and put some make-up on, do some errands, and maybe go for a walk. Where is all the time going? How did my mother do so much with two kids?

I have decided that if we ever move, I want a smaller place and I want to rent! I want both of us to have shorter to do lists so we can spend more time as a family. My mommy friend wrote a post once about downsizing and simplifying and I am totally on board! I want to take all the crap we have collected over our lives and throw most of it out!

One thing you should know about me if you don’t already is, I am a pack rat. I have a very hard time throwing things out. I go through my closet to get rid of things I’m not wearing and cannot part with the t-shirt I’ve had since middle school because it still fits and I might want to wear it again even though I haven’t worn it in years. If I don’t have time to go through the mail, I look for any letters from family and then shove the rest it all in a drawer because, even though all our bills and statements are electronic, I don’t want to through away anything I might need later… and then I never go through it and we have a desk drawer full of crap. Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea.

Last Saturday afternoon we were invited to our neighbors daughter’s first birthday party. They have the same floor plan we do, but there house looked so much bigger because of the way they use their space. They have less furniture and trinkets and more space. It made me realize just how bad I am at collecting stuff.

So I have decided that I am going to start throwing things away! Every week from here on out (probably over the weekend since I’m already not keeping up with things during the week), I am going to go through a room in our house and rearrange and declutter! That will also serve as my workout on those days since cleaning burns calories 🙂

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