A while ago there was a meme going around where people (women, as far as I know) posted pictures of themselves first thing in the morning. I think this was supposed to make us feel better about how real women really look, but mostly if made me feel fat, and creased, and like I have cheap highlights.
Anyway, you’re supposed to look like you just woke up when you JUST WOKE UP. But what about your house? If you’re a good home manager (as opposed to a good homemaker a la Martha Stewart), if you’re efficient and organized and motivated, your house theoretically could look pretty good in the morning.
Right?
Once my house looked so good in the morning that even when I took pictures of the great bead flood of 2008, Sharla felt bad enough about her own kitchen that she had to leave my post forthwith and go clean up. Well, Sharla, have I got a surprise for you.
There have been days when I have shined my sink, and great is the rapture of the fresh start that greets me in the morning.
This morning, however, was not such a day.
This morning, when I stumbled from my bed at 9:45 (I read a book last night, sue me. And Sally knows how to work the remote and the kids can all scavenge for food, which is both solution and problem), this is what I saw:
Remember that things always look slightly BETTER in pictures.
I’d point out what’s wrong with this picture, but close-ups will better serve the interests of full disclosure. (Only, notice the three garbage cans in the middle left; two of those belong in the bathrooms upstairs. I emptied them, but, uh, didn’t quite get them back upstairs. In three days time. Oh, and the box above the trash cans is full of books from the library book sale. Because our house is just so EMPTY.)
But first, the opposite view:
Sports bra (dirty), overturned diaper basket, laundry (clean), fort (rather modest in scale).
Now on to the good shots:
Will not attempt to describe in this short caption space.
(L-R) Dried up mac and cheese (originally homemade, with whole-wheat noodles, for what it’s worth) from lunch yesterday; Watercolor set (not at all dried out); Bin of stuff from the van (which I cleaned out in order to fit the seat back in for our new carpool, and which someone apparently mistook for the pajama and/or snow clothes bin); Crusty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (from an old bottle of peanut butter, so I’m not worried about salmonella. The kids finally made themselves sandwiches last night after accepting that Mom was ignoring them to futile-y wrestle her minivan post into submission, and Dad napped on the couch); Yogurt and juice boxes (which we save for special trips / nights when Mom and Dad are as good as gone); Glass jewelry beads (which Sally and her new friend, see carpool, made into 74 bracelets and necklaces yesterday afternoon).
Avert your eyes if you have a food handler's permit.
At this point Dick wailed that he was starving. Since he is hard at work freelancing to support my new Arctic Circle habit, and since I was hungry by now anyway, I interrupted my urgent picture-taking to make pancakes. And then I had to take a picture of this lovely tableau: Still-life of Batter, Hairgel, Mostly-Empty Rubbermaid Container, Craft Supplies, and Elixir of Life. (In the far right in cellophane is a fake-ceramic treasure I rescued from the DI (thrift store) last week. It figures prominently in my new series One Parent-Volunteer’s Junk: Another Parent-Slacker’s Prize.)
Once fortified with righteous carbs and fresh buttermilk syrup, I returned to my anthropological quest:
Jam doesn't really need to be refrigerated, right?
(L-R) Stuffed animals and food preparation go together so well (“Eating and driving, it’s as handy as skiing and doing your taxes. If my dinner reeks, I’ll put it in the trunk”*); When will those darn kids learn that we clean up after ourselves in this house? (How long has that banana been out?); More yogurt, Dishes from the late-night bacon and eggs meal Dick and I had once Oliver and co. were trundled off to bed.
"It's fun to make dirty things clean and shining again."**
(L-R) Coupons I will save until they expire, never remembering to use them; Yes, Susan, the dishes in the dishwasher are clean, WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?; Plant growth chart of Sally’s that I’ll use in a WFMW post to demonstrate the proper way to raise curious, creative, DIY children; Dishes from Thursday night (or was it Wednesday?); Fetid smell from (long-)standing water; Empty (sob) brownie pan; Goo Gone for the bird poop on Dick’s coat that turned out to be gum from the bus.
And finally, a few shots of the floor, though you’ll have to trust me on the ice-melt-and-sand drippings everywhere from our winter boots, and the crumbs and beads and general unhealthiness:
Because the trash can was SO FAR AWAY.
This is why it pays to keep a clean house. People are slightly more likely to throw trash away if the entire house does not look like one big dumpster. (I think. At least, I imagine that would be a benefit of habitual tidiness.)
I think Susan TRIED to clean this up.
This watercolor rinse water wouldn’t be so bad if A) it hadn’t taken me longer to photograph it than it would have taken me to wash it up and B) it hadn’t been there for at least a week.
There you have it: What my house really looks like, before the makeup and primping and good lighting.
And in case you’re thinking that a messy house is a fine trade off for a rich creative life and a stunning personal appearance, I shall inflict my much-revised-to-no-effect minivan post on you sometime next week, and here is what I really look like, first thing in the morning (and often in the afternoon, and sometimes (when Dick is REALLY LUCKY) in the evening):
Sharla? YOU'RE WELCOME
Jane
*A Clarification, of sorts*
I don’t want to be defensive about this — in fact, I think I owe it to myself to own this mess, to not shrink or be ashamed of it. I’m the one who’ll be cleaning it up later, so who cares if it’s messy for a couple hours or a couple days while I read Barbara Michaels’ gothic mysteries? I want to be free, FREE I tell you, from housewifely expectations. There are 4 (okay, 3 — Spot, at 2 1/4 years-old is a bit young) other people at my house who are more than welcome to pitch in ANY TIME.
But a few notes to clarify: (1) This happened today, Saturday, so no school was missed and Dick was home and capable of (if not interested in) supervising the kids while I slept in. (2) My house doesn’t always look like this. It certainly does sometimes, though, with today being a bit extreme, which is why today was a good day to take pictures. (3) We had a maid for over a year when we lived in Cairo. It was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, for my little bourgeouis self. Will post more on that later.
Thank you for the kind comments. I was surprised by how much of a reaction it got. I would love to start an entire carnival based on True FULL Monty Pictures of Whatever Mess One Needs To Own, but seriously? My comment anxiety is NOTHING compared to my Mr. Linky-Carnival anxiety. If you do write a FULL Monty post of your own and link back here, please tell me about it, and I’ll add your link to the body of this post. (That sort of link is “worth” more technorati-ally and google-analytically speaking than a Mr. Linky link anyway.)
Also, I would love to see your FULL Monty pictures — in posts or emails. I certainly understand the reluctance to post these online. There was a time not too long ago that I would have hated to have my mother-in-law see that her grandchildren sometimes have to negotiate crusty noodles and curdling yogurt. But somehow these anxieties are slight compared to the truly important things in life (like comment anxiety 
).
*Some Kind of Wonderful
**Anne of Windy Poplars
{Back to Bloggy Giveaway Carnival Post}
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That was so fun. And…encouraging!
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Oh that was just fantastic! Nice to know there are others of my kind out there behind closed doors:0)
A
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Oh my goodness, I loved this post. And although you are not making this an “official” tag I’m going to carry on the torch and post my own pictures of utter household disaster. My pictures may include bags of dirty, stinky diapers, overflowing trash cans, toys in every inch of my house, shoes and socks randomly strewn from one end to the other, and stacks and stacks of paper.
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God bless you for this post.I swear right now my home is your home’s less tidy twin! You need to add a Mr. Linky and start a carnival. It could be like the homemaking version of the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign only better and with more undergarments laying around…
(P.S. If that is how you look on a regular basis you are doing great! I washed and dried my hair before going to Bible study the other night and had no less than 5 people ask me what I had done different because I “looked great.” Shameful.)
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Oh I feel so much better now, knowing that I’m not the only one.
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That was just beautiful. I would take reading over cleaning any day. I would also take computer time, TV, just staring off into space, and/or getting kidnapped by aliens. Pretty much anything except changing stinky diapers.
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Jane I love you. Not in a creepy way. Just in the way that I totally want to be your friend. You and your post are awesome and I will so be copying your idea with a link back, so let me know if you follow Land of Lovings advice to create a blog carnival or blinky for it.
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One of my earliest posts was a similar laundry post. I’ve thought of doing a kitchen and livingroom post like this too.
I HAVE to say that your morning disheveled look is more attractive, in my opinion, than the photo behind you. I think you look cuter in those glasses (I can’t wear plastic specs like that because they always fall down my nose bridge and my eyes are way not centered in them) AND that you should wear your hair spiky with the bangs swept to the side. Maybe not quite THAT spiky… but spiky.
Funny — my hair has only grown 1/2 in since that picture was taken (the one on the wall; the candid shot I took this morning, and it was the only shot I took of me), and with hair this short, 1/2 inch makes a huge difference. So now I AM wearing my bangs swept to the side (though I prob. wouldn’t have used a word like “swept” to describe it).
I used to wear my contacts exclusively, but the older I get, the more they irritate me. I would wear my glasses all the time except the frames are loose and do the slipping thing, and also, the smudges and spots on the lenses bug me SO much. I end up washing them every 30 min or so when I’m wearing them, because I’m SUCH A CLEAN FREAK.
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BTW, you are such a tease with your “full monty” in the title.
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You just made my day. I’m linking to this post on my blog. My husband is convinced that our house is the only one that ever gets this messy–because of course it’s the only one he sees in such a condition!
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Oh my, Oh my, I say get a cleaning service. They are not that expensive and I think you need one.
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Hmm… where have I seen something VERY similar to that before?
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Oh.
My.
Gosh.
I borrowed my neighbor’s camera (since Rob’s out of town with my camera AND my laptop!) and took pictures of my house this morning (I also read an entire book last night. And one the night before, and two the night before that, w/ hubby being out of town; one night this week I was up ’til 4 am, on a schoolnight/morning!!!) to post with the simple title, “Honey, pleeeease come home,” and I chickened out!
I couldn’t believe my eyes when you had the guts to do it. I actually had the guts until I remembered I have one sister in law who just got onto facebook, which I just got onto to connect with her, and I had just invited her to my blog. And dangit, I do care what she thinks, and don’t want her first view of my blog to be pics of my tornado house. Since she lives in a diff. state I want to preserve the false idea that I have a clean house the rare times she visits, since she keeps a clean house even with 4 children (ALL the time. She really does. It’s amazing and depressing at the same time).
But I’ll email you the pics. You’ve got nothing on my pics. I have a partially-made biscuit mixture, a spilled ‘crystal candy’ scout science experiment that dried out quite hard on the counter (since Wednesday when I was in the middle of piano lessons), and so on and so forth. Yuck.
But thank you thank you thank you for being brave enough to prove that HELLLLOOOO moms, we are so real. We would all need less prozac if we all knew this and realized we don’t have to compare our worst against someone else’s best.
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That’s a stitch! I take pics of our messes just for my OWN amusement…
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I see my future. And I can see the mess in my future that is already messy now.
Thanks – this is so real. Like all the Christmas treat ingedients that are still on our kitchen counter … and I won’t even mention the dining room table I haven’t seen the top of since the flood, the piles everywhere, the magazines sticking to the wooden floor …
Yeah, this is all real life.
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I love a great post that helps me feel better about my messy house! I don’t even have the great excuse of three kids. I know it’s bad when my hubby comes in and says “I need to clean this place up.” (Notice his use of I instead of you or we…he definitely knows me sooo well.)
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We gotta let things go sometimes so that we can enjoy our lives. Why clean all the time when you can clean once a week.
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I. am. crying. Seriously, tears. You are going to die when I tell you what I’m about to tell you. I was sitting here, knowing I need to go to bed because we have 9:00 church (ugh) and we didn’t make it on time at 11. But I didn’t want to go to bed, I wanted to read a funny post. So I’m posting on my blogs (did you notice my favicon thingie or whatever it’s called?) and sitting here thinking this:(and I swear to you this is the honest to goodness truth). “Man, I wonder what “Jane” is doing. I hope everything’s okay, it seems like she doesn’t post that much anymore. I really need my Jane fix. I guess I have to be understanding that she has a life and can’t post every day (like in Nov) just so I can have my laugh/cry/moment of the day. *big sigh*.”
And then I noticed that I already had a comment on my very recent post and it’s Jane! And she dedicated an entire post to ME and I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself and she already has 17 comments (holy shnikies) and I haven’t even read it yet!
So, smack on the head and then I’m over here and I’m laughing my head off until I’m crying and my husband (who is enjoying the Wii we were given) is asking me what I’m laughing at. (He hates to be left out).
Friend, you are the BEST! I have thought about posting pictures of my messy house and asking the www if I should turn myself in to Child Services or not.
So thanks for the post dedicated to me. But believe it or not, my house is still worse.
I think I may just email you pictures to convince you though, I’m not sure I’m as brave as you are.
Thanks again, though. I LOVE you!
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Okay, I just read the comments now and I have to comment again. I always wondered if there were others like me lurking out there. I want to make friends with all of them now. And I too read books every night way too late which makes me out of it half the morning (survival mode) before I teach preschool and then piano/voice. And I think you look beautiful in both pictures. I wish I was brave enough for short hair.
I do have to say though, I wish I could live on whatever planet Diary is living on.
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P.S. I’ve got to remember that your posts aren’t delivered to my door until the day after you post. Is there any way to change that?
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You SNUCK INTO MY HOUSE? That’s so rude.
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I applaud you and love you with all my heart.
And if it makes you feel any better, I have tried this and found it not to be true (at least at my house):
“People are slightly more likely to throw trash away if the entire house does not look like one big dumpster. (I think. At least, I imagine that would be a benefit of habitual tidiness.)”
All that happens is I notice it more and become more of a nag. To no avail.
Not a good thing.
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Do you know what? I think this is a reeeeal house. That’s just what happens when there are kids running around. I grew up in a house that was much messier than that, and though it drove me crazy at times, visiting people’s perfect houses made me feel like they were cheating somehow. I love your colors and interior design, btw.
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My kitchen looked similar this morning…I think it’s just what happens when mommies get to sleep in.
PS I am going to have to check out hobby/snobby lobby for those cookie cutters you used as pancake shapes. I had never thought to use a cookie cutter in that way. THank you for the idea!
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So THIS is how the other half lives.
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Yep, just what I figured. The mess does not just double with each kid, it’s exponential. So I have a lot of cleaning coming up. I’d like to point out that the laundry in the chair was clean, so that’s okay. They had clean clothes to wear.
See, I can justify my leaving hampers of clean kid clothes in the hallway for a few days or our clean clothes in the dryer just to keep fluffing them for 20 minutes to get rid of the wrinkles until I actually take ten minutes to put them away.
And darn it, sometimes we need to stay up late reading when our husband’s will be around to get up with the kids.
What worries me is justifying the mess that will happen this next week with the bloggy carnival starting tomorrow. Maybe I should actually clean on Sunday, something I normally avoid, as it is a day of rest.
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I’m back. I just got the email version and it was already revised. Believe me, it’s got to be okay to have a mess like that sometimes or else I can’t live with myself. I love Saturdays too because Eldon will get up with the kids and let me sleep in, even if he stayed up just as late as me. Last night when I was explaining to Eldon why I was laughing so hard he asked me if I thought we would be good friends if we lived closer. I told him I thought so but that you were probably too smart for me.
No really, it would be cool but that’s what’s so cool about the technology we have, we’ve never met and yet I still consider you a friend. Pretty nifty if you ask me.
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Okay, I must come to the defense of dear Jane (even though she didn’t ask me too) However, I DO have a cleaning service and my house STILL looks like this. You know why? Because a cleaning service does not put your clean clothes in drawers, put toys away, take down forts that have been played with, sort toys into proper containers, tidy up papers or sort your mail, and many don’t do dishes. They will mop my floor, dust my furniture and clean my toilets, but Lord above, they have to be able to see them first. So, a cleaning crew – as expensive or inexpensive as they are (I live in Dallas and pay $65 twice a month for 2,000 sq ft and that is considered a deal) you still are required to clean.
As my SIL says “we caught you living”. A house where people are living, loving, laughing and enjoying each other does not look like the Queen Mother is expected to arrive at any moment. And that, is all I have to say about that!
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*click*
(that was me subscribing…you’re funny!)
Anyone who has the guts to post those pictures (which look very familiar, by the way!) has my vote for AWESOME!
Not only that…but, I want your hair. Not in a weird way…but I totally want to cut mine that short. LOVE IT!
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You are very brave to post all those pics. BTW – you look great!
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Hey Jane — I saw your messy house, yup; know what else I saw?
HAPPY KIDS!
You go, girl!
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OMG….now seriously I just got done telling my 4 and 5 year old boys that not everyone lives in a house where it looks like lego exploded and little tykes spit up…..and thats just the parts i will admit to…my sink is full of all of todays dirty bottles…yes ALL i will wash them all first thing in the morning….
steff
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Ditto what Beth said about a cleaning service. I have a couple who come once a fortnight, mainly to do floors, bathrooms, the loos, that kind of thing. Pretty much all of the mess/real family life that happened while Mom got a wee sleep-in, is stuff you have to clean up before the cleaning people can come. We end up hiding dirty pots in the dishwasher and oven so they can clean out the sink (as though the sink’s the dirtiest, worst thing to deal with). And they just work around the pile on the end of the kitchen bench and the pile of Christmas treat ingredients that I mentioned earlier and the dismantled Christmas tree on the floor of the living room (still trying to find a bay/box to store it in).
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I love it! My house is trashed right now, and usually, after working and commuting all day, I would feel guilty if I spent too much time cleaning and not enough time bonding with my daughter and husband. So, unless I have advance warning that an outsider will be viewing my abode, my house looks like it was hit by a tornado on the inside. I say to myself daily that I will spend the following weekend cleaning it up, but that goal gets pushed aside if ANYTHING else comes up, like watching trashy reality TV or going to the library. Or taking a nap. Cheers!
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I grew up in a free-for-all house – dishes in sink, trash never taken out, laundry on any available surface, beds never made, and it was great. My husband did not. He is what you might say “anal.” As in, if we’re fighting, it’s almost always because he’s TOO particular about where things go or how they should be… and it’s a lot of dang pressure on me to keep up! After 17 years of marriage, we have worked out this compromise: he cleans, picks up, makes beds, deals with the dog; cleaning ladies every 2 weeks do heavy lifting; I cook and do laundry. Which is kind of a scam because I actually make the kids do laundry, and I really like to cook. He will even follow behind me in the kitchen to clean while I’m cooking.
I have insisted on having “my space” where I don’t have to worry about cleaning up or organizing. The space is my closet, my dresser drawer, and my office (not in our home – in an actual office building). Seriously, he is not allowed to pressure me in anyway about cleaning up “my space.” The man, in an OCD frenzy, is not at all above actually organizing my closet/dresser, and in fact has even come over to my office and picked up/organized. I once found him sitting on the floor of my closet, surrounded by shoes, lining them up in neat little rows!
I love him dearly, but it’s really a sickness. I can see being in our 70s, still fighting about this, and it’s gonna drive me nuts!
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You are SO funny! (and brave too) I’m considering posting my own pictures, but I’m not sure I want my mother-in-law to see it (although I know she’s seen my awful cupboards and probably suspects that I clean the rest of the house like a madman before she comes).
I’d like to believe that my house only looks like a disaster occasionally, but it looks like one now, and I think that every neat-freak friend of mine has “stopped-by” at a time that my house was a disaster (SO EMBARRASSING!). What that probably means is that I’m just a messy person, and everyone who cares already knows about it. In my defense though, kids can really make that mess in half a day if you aren’t keeping up.
Your morning picture, by the way, actually looks really good. Some people spend hours trying to get their hair to do that. I sat behind someone in church with that style a few weeks ago.
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your hair looks so cute, i almost want to go whack mine off again.
i spent three days at my sil’s house in el paso, and her house was trashed. it made me feel so much better about coming home to my own trashed house.
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I LOVED this post !! I feel sooo much better now that I know I’m not the only one that on occasion decides to read a book & say to heck with the cleaning !Maybe I’ll get up the nerve to do a “full monty” post of my own…I’ll let ya know.
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I can no longer read here. Just kidding! I love that you posted this. You are incredibly brave. I can’t tell you how often my house looks like this.
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Found this as a link from someone else’s blog, but just wanted to say thank you–I’m forwarding this to my husband so he can see that ours isn’t really the messiest house in the world! BTW, underneath all that mess, it looks like you have a truly lovely house. Love the paint job and you’re kitchen is GORGEOUS! (not to mention the fact that I truly envy anyone who actually has a dishwasher…)
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[...] Hidden Benefits of Keeping a History (Thanks, Laura) encourages us to record both our successes and failures, and our feelings about [...]
Awesome! I think we are soul sisters! I am so proud of your mess!
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