Am I the Only One?

I have been looking at blogs for about a year now, and my favorite ones are all sewing, knitting or craft related. They also have beautiful photography. I know this is probably not the case, as a matter of fact several of the blog writers have stated such. But from the pictures, the houses always look perfectly decorated and perfectly kept. I feel like such a failure! LOL

My house never looks well kept unless I have cleaned it 5 minutes before. Seriously, within an hour, you can barely tell I did any housework at all. It is nearly impossible to keep up with. Now, I do have 7 children and they are homeschooled, so they are ALWAYS at home. There are no times during the day where there is nobody here to mess things up. All meals are eaten in my kitchen, so as soon as breakfast is cleaned up, it is time for lunch, etc. And yes, my children all have chores to do. There is a rotating chore list, so no one is always stuck with the least favorite one. All of the older ones are also required to wash their own clothing once a week. I do all towels, sheets, mine and dh's clothes and the 2 youngest children's clothes, so I still have quite a bit of laundry to do. Anyway, try to fit sewing time in here and you end up with a trashed house most days. It doesn't help that I grew up in a house with a mother who kept everything very neat and clean. Of course, I only had one brother who was 5 years younger than me and we went to school everyday. I really feel better when my house is clean. I find it very difficult to sit down and sew when the house is a wreck, but if I wait until everything is clean, I would never get to enjoy my hobby. I really do have some serious issues with perfectionism. I am a perfectionist who cannot even come close to achieving perfection. Some days it can almost drive me crazy!

Anyway, I said all of that to ask if I am really the only one who struggles with this? In my mind, all of you ladies in blog land always have everything perfectly in place, fix huge and creative meals every night and of course clean up the kitchen immediately afterwards ; ) And then retire to your neat and orderly sewing rooms to sew up some amazing creation and then photograph it beautifully to share the next day on your well written blog. LOL In reality, I know this is not true, and if this IS true for you, I don't want to hear about it!

I will share a picture of what my house looks like right now as I am writing this. I do intend on cleaning up after this blog entry, but I promise, it will be back to looking like the picture by tonight LOL I don't know why I needed to get this out, most days I really don't let this bother me, at least not much, but it has been a rough week.

I added an extra one of the dining room for good measure ; )
I won't even bother showing the childrens' rooms, they do not have my neatfreak tendencies at all! LOL Well, Isabella does, but she shares a room with her sister Sydney, I think at this point she has just given up, poor thing. Even my room, which is usually pretty neat, I have to have someplace to escape to, is a mess this morning :sigh: