Mess Monday

Don't worry, this is not replacing Multitude Monday.

After my little Friday night reality check, where I realized that, yes, cleaning actually is work, not just some kind of system, my friend Mat. Anna did something very sweet.  She actually posted photos of messes around her home (which I must say seem pretty mild to me) just for little old me!  The post has generated quite a few comments!

In her defense, in case you think she or I are posting these things because we want to keep our houses this way instead of being motivated by blog photos of clean rooms, it was posted on a Saturday morning before half her family was up and before she had begun to tackle any of it.

What was so helpful about it for me was that it shows a slice of real life, not a perfected, cleaned room.

Sure, the beautiful rooms are inspiring.  But they can also make me want to go the other direction.

Many afternoons, my thought process goes something like this as I click around the internet:

Click.  My furniture doesn't look like that!  Click.  My curtains don't match that well!  Click.  I don't even have curtains in that room.  Click.  I don't have any white plates on my wall!  Click.  How can I possibly do a load of laundry or pick up the toys in the living room when my home is such an a priori failure?  (I then proceed to sit at the computer for another hour or two until it is way past time to start making dinner.)

I realize that I quoted this once before (and this will probably not be the last time!), but at Like Mother, Like Daughter, Laila instructs the following:

You need to clear your mind of all those perfect magazine pictures and find your own order.

Here, then, is what I propose: Mess Monday.  I will pick one mess in my house that is driving me batty on Monday mornings (trust me, picking one is in itself accomplishing something because I am acknowledging that I cannot clean a whole messy, or cluttered, house in one go) and I will post photos.  When the mess is dealt with, I will post the (I hope) beautiful, clean, inspiring photos of my own order.

Will you join me?  Call it accountability if you'd like.  Call it goal-setting.  Call it real living in our homes.  Whatever.  Leave a comment below and a link to your post if you do something similar!


(And I apologize for the quality of these photos—my camera was charging and these are from my little flip phone—not that anyone needs to see those piles in any more detail!)