I’m bone-deep tired of mess.

There’s dried peanut butter on my cabinets and mysterious purple stains on my couch. My white doors are marred by brown handprints, and colorful paints stain my breakfast nook. When I walk to the bathroom at night, I trip over toy trains and Magnatile towers.

I’m so tired of cleaning.

A few months ago, I was visiting my mother’s house alone. She was having breakfast, and I was sitting at her kitchen table, noticing how nice her home smelled and how crisp the colors were in her rug. Her wood furniture reflected the morning light, and her upholstered armchairs were a pristine almond cream.

Sitting there, I felt an overwhelming ache for a clean house and cared-for things. How long had it been since I sank into a chair that smelled like wool and cinnamon, not musty socks and forgotten applesauce?

When toys creep in

There are things I said pre-parenthood that haunt me today. One such comment I made publicly on Facebook.

I am that mom now. The one with a toy volume crisis. Every room in my home has wicker baskets to help contain the toy spread. But much like a tsunami, the toys creep in imperceptibly at first until they suddenly overwhelm. Stuffies pile on dining room chairs. Bits of dried playdough collect in measuring cups, which are then shoved behind curtains. Lego men and their irritatingly small helmets drift into kitchen cabinets, under the stove, and inside my shower.

The younger version of myself still lives in my head. Why can’t you just control the environment, Brittany? What’s so hard about keeping a clean house?

A disorderly parent and SAHM

I’m trying. I declutter regularly. I buy organization bins and teach my son that every item has a “home.” But he forgets their homes, and I forget them, too.

I’ve never been exceedingly orderly. There is often dried coffee on my shirt, crumbs in my car seat and empty bottles in my shower. I can never remember where my keys are or how long the laundry has been in the washer.

My mind is often elsewhere. It’s drifting out toward the garden, where I’d like to be planting lettuce seeds. It’s editing a story I haven’t written yet or planning a trip I’d like to take. Sometimes, it’s mulling over a book I read or imagining a bike ride on a Swedish country hillside.

I wish I cared more about order or was better at designing a housework system that produces it. Most of the time, I decide the house is fine. The dishes are done by bedtime, the floors are vacuumed, and the counters are wiped down. The laundry eventually cycles through the washer. Things are hygienic, if not necessarily aesthetic.

I’ll do better tomorrow

If I wanted to, I could find the time to do better. I could train my son to clean up after himself more strictly. I could put the housework on that nice dry-erase calendar I bought for the kitchen, and then actually follow a cleaning schedule.

Maybe if I put this energy in, I’d spend less time being reactionary to the mess that occurs without structure or discipline.

I never seem to find time for it, though.

Even for stay-at-home moms, there is only so much energy for the day. Between care tasks like meals, snacks, spills, changes, tantrums, and education, I need to fit in meal planning, grocery shopping, bills, hygienic self-care (yes, I need to shower) and quality time with my husband and dog. Then there’s the freelance work, and family relationships to foster, and exercise to ambitiously plan and never execute.

And anyway, who on their death bed clutched the hand of a loved one and said, “You know my one regret? I wish I’d spent more time on the housework.”

So I slog on. I’ll get the peanut butter off the cupboards tomorrow.