Diary of a Neat Freak

~“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing
is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.”
~ Phyllis Diller

I have something to admit…

My daily “degree of sanity” often has a direct correlation with how organized and clean my surroundings are.

There. I admit it. I am one of those people who feel 10 times more:

• Capable and efficent
• Relaxed and energetic, and
• Ready to dive into my day

IF (and only IF) I begin my day feeling like things are in their place.

Obsessive compulsive? Maybe.

BUT there are positives to this. I actually like to organize things! Which means every so often I reorganize and, believe it or not, my closets can at times look like this:

However, sometimes, what sounds like a blessing, can also become a curse.
(More specifically, keeping a house organized and clean when you are a mother of three ridiculously messy kids.)

The “Curse of Cleanliness”

If my 2-year-old leaves a long trail of his toy cars out…
I try to let it go. (At least until he is done playing with them.)

If my 5-year-old dumps all of his legos out on the floor so he can find that ONE teeny, tiny, same-color-as-the-carpet lego…
Then ideally, I tell myself to think: So be it.

If my oldest daughter leaves her dirty clothes on the floor right. beside. the. laundry basket …
AHHH! I try really hard to just leave them lay there until she picks them up since it’s her mess and she is old enough to pick things up herself.

The problem is: a couple cars, an entire box of legos, and some dirty clothes begin to add up. Very quickly a “little” mess can become a big mess. And when I look at a BIG MESS, that is when the panic can start to set in, because the ability to let go of a complete and utter mess (for a self-diagnosed, obsessive-compulsive, neat freak) can sometimes be hard.

This is where a blessing can change to a curse, because being organized and keeping a house clean with young kids is really…

An oxymoron.

In fact, in my book, the words “clean house” and “kids” really shouldn’t be used together in the same paragraph EVER. (Since keeping a clean house with kids is close to impossible!)

Letting Go of the Impossible

It has definitely gotten better over the years. Little by little I have started letting my obsession with over organizing and cleanliness go… You just have to as a parent in my household. Yet letting go can be hard…

In the beginning, with only one child to clean up after, I used to trail my toddler like a shadow, picking her little messes up before she even had a chance to remember she had made them. That quickly became ridiculously exhausting.

So instead I started picking up in hour shifts.
Then it moved to half-day shifts.

Something had to give. The “obsessive” picking up was still ridiculously exhausting and making our days of play not fun. All I could think about was how much I would have to pick up when we were through playing!

When my 2nd child arrived I finally got smarter with the genius idea to have my kids begin helping me. Together we would sing a clean-up song, and “together” we would clean.

NOTE: This is about the same time in my parenting career when I really had to focus on learning patience, because of course for every 20 items I would pick up and put away, my 3-year-old might put away 1 in the general vicinity of where it belonged… but hey, it was a start? And over the years this ratio has drastically improved.

By the time I got to my 3rd child, as long as things where picked up on the main floor before we went to bed, I felt OK.

Life as a Closet Neat Freak.

A couple years ago I posted my proud attempt at “messy play” on Facebook. (Notice my friends seem to know all about my “neat freak” habits.)

In the above Facebook conversation, my friend Barbara made the comment: “They look like they are having a blast!”

This statement hits the nail on the head as to why I needed to slowly learn how to let go of the obsessive cleaning… just as my daily “degree of sanity” often has a direct correlation with how organized and clean my surroundings are, there must be a direct correlation between my kids and messes, because my kids always seem to have much more fun the messier their surroundings!

Over the years did my cleanliness standards drop? Maybe.
Was my house top notch clean 100% of the time? I’d like to think so, but probably not.

Were my kids and I having fun and enjoying our days more because of the little messes?
Most definitely…

Somewhere along the line I learned to just LET. GO. of the impossible goal of household cleanliness perfection.

But lets not hide that fact that the neat freak is still buried within me.
Yes… it is true: Once a Neat Freak. Always a neat freak.

To many people I am certain my home still seems very clean most all the time.
(Confession: occasionally I do trail my parents around when they come to visit us - stealthily picking up their coffee mugs just seconds after their last sip to make sure it ends up in the sink.)

But all in all, I have learned to be at peace with my kids messes to a a certain degree… and occasionally, I just get my organizational “fix” via my own closets (see picture above).

Leave a Comment. Do you ever feel as though you are fighting a losing battle with household cleanliness and kids? What habits did you have as an adult that had to be “let go of” after becoming a parent?

I am a staff member of the National Association of Mothers' Centers and a longtime member of the Mothers' Center of Greater Toledo in Ohio. My husband and I are busy raising 3 children ages 2-9. I have a professional background as a graphic designer in the creative and education industry. Since 2005, I have been using my professional skills by actively volunteering with the Mothers' Center of Greater Toledo in various leadership positions.

Kate Fineske

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Tagged as: cleaning, cleaning with kids, mother support, mothers group, neat freak