For the most part, we love being a homeschooling family. The kids are enthused about learning, they have the freedom and flexibility to learn about things they’re interested in, and they get enough rest—something that never happened when they went to school. We have so much time together as a family, and that is the catch-22 of homeschooling, for me, anyway. I love being with my kids, but…
I kinda miss those days when I could just go purge one of the boys’ bedrooms of clutter while they were away at school and had no idea what I was doing. Or when I could dedicate a whole 9 to 2:30 of cleaning the house and catching up on laundry without interruption. I’ve heard other homeschooling mothers agree with the following statement: we never have a chance to catch up!
The dining room doubles as our schoolroom and office. (I need a bigger house!) I’m looking around, and I see a world atlas sitting atop a basket of clean laundry, beside an overflowing trash can stuffed with old papers, snack wrappers and pencil shavings. The bag I take with me when I teach art is half-shoved under said chair. One of Eli’s watercolor paintings is on the floor next to a box of framed photographs Donnie needs to hang. A dustbunny composed mainly of cat fur lurks along the base of my dusty, overstuffed bookshelves. And that is just ONE corner of ONE room in a house in need of serious tidying.
I think it was Phyllis Diller who said, “Cleaning the house while children are growing is like shoveling the sidewalk while it’s still snowing.” She must’ve known some homeschooling families when she said that, because around here, it never quits snowing. I wouldn’t trade my kids, or our homeschooling lifestyle, for anything. But for the sake of my own sanity, I have to figure out a way to get ahead of the mess.