I am so excited to be a part of the Keeping it Real Home Tour and Blog Hop! This is an issue near and dear to my heart, setting aside the illusion of perfection! How many times have you avoided having a friend over because of the state of your house? We compare ourselves and our homes with our friends and feel like there is this elusive standard to maintain.
The reality… is that 90% of us don’t really hold this standard in our day to day lives! Our homes are not the image of a magazine cover, they are lived in! So this post, this video home tour, is me opening myself up, being vulnerable and breaking the status quo! You are going to get a tour, an inside look at my lived in home. Dishes on the counter, laundry to be done, kids rooms littered with clothes. This is me! The general state of my life as a homeschool, work from home mom.
Today I am sitting at the park, in the glorious sunshine, away from the never ending list of my home. After making my video, I figured I had two options:
Work like a madwoman to feel better about myself
OR
Run from the to do list to the beautiful sunshine and take the kids to the park!
You can tell what I chose.
If I’m being completely honest, I sometimes feel very sorry for myself when I see my friends sending their kids to school, having the day to work through their lists. Man, if I had 3/5 of the kids at school, I’d be a machine! I’d spend the morning cleaning, prepping dinner and getting organized, then quiet time (oh the bliss of a quiet time) I would write. It would be heaven!
Instead, my kids are ALWAYS there. If I do school with one downstairs, the other four are living tornados upstairs. If I clean one room, I find lego strewn in the basement and crafts galore pulled out in the school room. There is no break, no relief, no end to children. Everywhere.
You know the show, Annie? I watched it again on my birthday this year, and couldn’t help but kill myself laughing at the song “Little Girls”. It may not be all girls, but they sure are everywhere! (random sidenote, it is a TERRIBLE show! I can’t believe I watched that growing up! A bathtub of vodka… awesome).
The thing with being a homeschool mom is that everything else in your life becomes second, third, or fourth priority! There is just simply not enough time to get stuff done. Feed the kids, do school, clean when you can! Life is crazy!
So cut yourself some slack momma! You are doing the best you can! Take a look at my chaos and hopefully, feel a whole lot better about yours!
The Keepin’ it Real Home Tour Blog Hop
For this home tour we won’t pretty up our houses or make them picture perfect, but rather show them as they are in their usual state – lived in!
We hope that through these home tours that you are encouraged to know that nobody has it all together, and that’s okay; that you have fun peeking into the life of another family and seeing how other moms do things; and also to dispel the myth that bloggers have a flawless life.
BUT WAIT! We want to see your homes too!!! Even if you aren’t a blogger, you can join us and share pictures of your home on Instagram. For the next six days we will have a little Instagram challenge; each day will have a different topic for you to post a picture on. Check out the graphic below to see what is assigned on each day. Be sure to use the hashtag #KeepinItRealHomeTour on all your Instagram post so we can find each other easily.
Do you ever feel pressured to maintain the illusion?
