All you need is love?
No, John…all you need is time.
This is my kitchen:
For every piece of paper I throw away, 17 more appear.
The amount of paper and crap my children bring into the house every single day is mind-boggling.
And, I don’t keep it!
I look at it and toss it. We hang up tests and quizzes for a week, and then they meet their maker, as well.
Heck, I’m even the heartless mother who only keeps kids art work if it has a hand print, foot print, or photo of the kid on it.
There’s just so much.
See the paper bag on the island chair?
Last week, I decided I would do an experiment and see how much stuff was coming home with the kids in a week.
That was my second bag for last week.
Two full grocery bags of papers and “stuff” in a week.
Nonsense.
I love organization and toyed with becoming a professional organizer at one point (I know…looking at that picture, no one would believe it) and so I have the tools down.
I have a small basket for mail, and I toss junk mail as soon as it comes in.
I have memory bins for all of the keepsake things that do come home.
We have a place on the invisible inside of the cabinets where I hang school schedules and lunch menus.
And still, this is what my kitchen looks like during a work week.
Now, I realize I am a full-time working mother of four.
I’m not looking for perfection.
But this drives me insane.
Something’s gotta give, and I fear, before long, it will be my sanity.
What I really need, though, is time.
That’s the struggle I have with the kitchen.
There isn’t enough time.
I love my kitchen. It is absolutely the hub of our home.
However, it is absolutely the hub of our home.
Things get dropped on a counter, left on the table, stuck in a bin, set on a chair.
And then, eventually, pushed into a pile until I have a good two hours to do something in the kitchen other than cook, monitor homework, stop a baby from slamming his fingers in the cabinets, make appointments and phone calls, update the calendar, etc.
Two hours.
And the kitchen looks like this:
Time.
Time is all you need.
