I figured I could do with taking the advice on board.
Usually my Mondays are spent recovering from the weekend, especially if it's been with the whole family; washing endless piles of clothes, stripping beds, restocking the fridge, removing the pieces of unidentifiable small plastic toy that have become embedded in the soles of my feet and wiping the scribble and sticky fingerprints off the walls.
The Girls' Room... Don't even get me started.
Usually a sea of clothes greets me, covering every inch of carpet, clean/dirty is anyone's guess. Toys everywhere and maybe even a sneaky half-eaten snack or two hidden under the bed. Oh, and there's the missing shoe that we had a monumental meltdown over on Saturday morning.
What baffles me is that the mess is the same even if we've been out and about for most of the weekend.
We're in a transition at the moment I suppose. My eldest (aged 7) had her own room and now has to share it with two others a few nights a week. I don't think I'd really considered how sad she'd be about it, after all, she had shared with her little brother before we moved here, and she loves having friends for sleepovers. But the novelty of having company is starting to wear off, and we need to be more practical about the use of the room. It all feels a little bit hectic, and some organisation might help to make things feel a little bit more comfortable again.
And stop me yelling at them to clear the crap up whilst simultaneously yanking my hair out with frustration. You can picture the attractive look.
We bought a nice new triple bed with a double and a single bunk and my eldest Step Daughter (aged 8) has a separate futon. We've been thinking about ways to adapt the built-in wardrobes to accommodate the vast collections of clothing owned between the three girls, and with Daddy being clever with that sort of thing it'll no doubt be a DIY project for one of our weekends off soon.
We have the luxury of a conservatory-come-playroom downstairs, which doubles as a guest room on the odd occasion. However the older girls, in between school, homework, gymnastics, swimming, football, play dates and theatre rehearsals they NEED their own space to escape to when the little ones screeching gets a bit too much to handle.
It's a situation that I never thought I'd have to find a solution to 6 months ago, but since we became one family, we're always having to think of ways to adapt and make living together that little bit easier.
So, I figured I'll take the advice in the article. 'Don't sweat the small stuff' is the overriding message here, and can be applied to our lives in many ways. The girls are happy, bright, popular and healthy. I need to let go of the desire to have every room of the house spotlessly clean and tidy, and just let the kids be kids in their own space.
Hopefully it'll bring down my stress levels, and if I'm really lucky, the clothes might grow legs after a while and get themselves to the laundry basket...
Well, we can all dream...
You can read the article here on Essential Kids.
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