Tidy Things Seen and Unseen

I was spending some time online this week checking out blog decorating tips, when I came across this blog.  Her post I was interested in was about building your own blog header, but my eyes were quickly drawn to her links in the side bar.  She had tips on organizing, beauty, fashion, organizing, health and organizing.  I can't believe someone's house actually looks like this.  I feel like even if I spent a month doing nothing but cleaning and organizing I still could not achieve this...

her linen closet

our linen closet   

 

   

 

 

 She obviously loves taking care of her home, and I totally admire that.  She loves her family so she shows them that by keeping the house (and her body) ship shape, nothing wrong with that.  But then I scroll farther and farther down and see...

her kitchen drawer

our kitchen drawer

her kids closet

our kids toy room

 Uggg.  Feelings of horrible mother and housekeeper flood my body. Don't get me wrong, I do wash the floors, clean our bathrooms and our dishes, do our laundry and put it away (mostly).  I don't have a dirty house or moldy rotten things around, but I'm also so so far from this.  There's nothing wrong with being like her, but I also know there's nothing wrong with being like me.  One person is not better than the other, they just simply have different priorities and different uses of time.  It takes a lot of energy to keep your house like this, and if my house was like this but the rest of my life was in shambles then I feel like there would be something weird about that. I personally would rather invest the amount of time and energy it would take to keep that house up into something else; playing movie theater with the kids all day, making mini-golf courses in the back yard and putting all afternoon, picnics, living room tents, baking sprees, serving our community, coffee with a friend, painting my mom's toes, a walk with my husband. 

I admit I do go through sprees where I clean like a freak and organize an area to perfection, but only to see it undone in a week or so and the aggravation of continuous up-keep is too much to fuss over.  I would rather keep the house in a functional clean state and live with a more laid-back attitude.  And the truth is, when I'm in a big cleaning mood I feel like I have to constantly say, 'Not now Liam, mommy is busy'.  He'll only remember the fact that mommy was always busy, not the fact that our linen closet looked like a hotel laudry room. 

2 Corinthians 4:18 says, " So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal".  The perfectly organized home is seen, perhaps by everyone (especially if you blog about it) but it will fade away.  But invested time in people, in relationships, in children, that will last for eternity.