What June Cleaver had that I do not

And that would be kids that are over three years old, lol.

I LOVE my kids beyond belief, but having two young ones does take its toll on the whole "role of the housewife" thing. They just plain get in the way of getting anything productive done in a shortish amount of time. Which is fine. They are supposed to need me, they are young and I take every day in with my whole heart because I know that these days go by too quickly and the time will come that I will look back and want these days to live again.

But getting stuff done? Yeah, there are days that it just doesn't happen. At all. And so I get back to the title of this entry. I think being a housewife is much easier when your kids are older. I betcha June Cleaver's house looked like a bomb went off when Beaver was little. Especially since he was so good at getting in to trouble when he was older, lol.

So, ... how to find a balance.

I have always hated that word, balance. You hear it and see it everywhere mom's are discussed. That we need to find a balance between work, kids, marriage and ourselves. I think there will never be a balance in my life because my kids will always come first and knock everything else off the scale, and I'm fine with that because like I said before, this is such a short time of their life span and mine.

So how have I found balance?

I call it the 10 minute tidy! (idea stolen from Big Comfy Couch's ten second tidy)

Before I play, I take 10 minutes to clean something. I set the timer so that Alexander knows that there will be an end and away I go. What ever I get done, gets done, what ever doesn't gets left until the next tidy time.

There are three in the day, morning, afternoon and evening. And this seems to be working, so far. In all honesty, I've only been doing this for three days. But it has given me the best of both worlds, Alexander still gets the best of me, my house gets and stays clean and tidy, and I don't feel overwhelmed by the whole thing. I do get kind of annoyed sometimes when I really get in to it, but 10 minutes is 10 minutes and I can always get back to it later, or after the kids go to sleep. (I think I'm still convincing myself of this, lol)

We'll see how long it lasts. I'm one week away from being finished with the office and am SO happy with the results. I can't find my camera cord so all before pictures will be posted with after pictures, but I'm really excited to show them off. I thought the kitchen was a transformation, but this is just amazing!

I'll leave it at that, build some suspense :)