Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Overwhelmed By Housework

I'm sure any SAHM knows how it is. The laundry is piled up for miles and the dishes are gathering a colony of bugs in the sink. There are tiny toy pieces everywhere and random snack leftovers collecting in corners and under furniture. That is what my house looks like right now. Today is the second day of school being back in for the twins after being home for 2 weeks with them. First there was the stomach virus. A few days of fever and vomiting followed by about a week of diarrhea. All while hubby was out of town for 7 days. Then hubby comes home for his annual vacation (the twins' spring break). You'd think that we would have gotten a lot done with both of us home for a week. Not.

I was so exhausted after his week gone that I spent the good part of his vacation sleeping. Yes, I needed it, very very badly, but the house needed some serious TLC and it didn't get it. So now I am alone with 3 of my kids (Devin only goes to her preschool MWF) and facing what promises to be a lifetime of drudgery in chores.

Hubby neglected to unload the dishwasher last night so I have a sink full of dirty dishes and nowhere to put them. The fruit flies are having a picnic in my kitchen sink. I have serious issues with doing other people's chores so usually I just don't. I might end up unloading later, or trying to get Robby (7) to, but for the moment I'm focusing on the laundry. I have 2 hampers full of clothes that need washing (at least 4 loads) and one already in the washer. 3 baskets of clean ones that need folding and putting away. A load of diapers to fold. A ginormous box full of outgrown boy clothes that need to be sorted by size and stored in their respective bins in the garage. Brown paper bags full of outgrown girl and baby clothes that need to be sent to their respective recipients. And my pants are wet because the baby dumped my Coke out in the computer chair this morning and what was left after I attempted to clean it has wicked through the sham-wow I'm sitting on. And the keyboard is sticky because of a marshmallow egg incident earlier. Let's not forget about all the peepee and poopy undies and shorts and pants and skirts that litter every bathroom sink because my four-year-old daughter can't ever stop what she's doing to use the toilet.

Someone just shoot me now.

I know I need to take baby steps and focus on one small task at a time. I feel so utterly alone in this daunting task of running a household and taking care of 6 people. Sometimes my husband feels more like a 5th child. His ADD makes it virtually impossible to rely on him do follow through on a task without some kind of intervention. I love him dearly, and he works hard so I can stay home, but sometimes the little angel and demon on my shoulders make it very hard for me to feel like a good wife to him. On the one hand, he does work hard for me to stay home, and I know he'd go to the end of the Earth for me. On the other hand, I'm so stressed out from dealing with the day-to-day of everyone's unique needs that sometimes I just want to beat him over the head with my grandmother's cast-iron skillet. Maybe that'll knock some sense into him.

Truth is, I married a man that is so opposite from me in most every practical way. What drew us together was our history (knowing each other since the 6th grade), our passions for music and dancing, our religious philosophies, and, of course, the thought of losing him to Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am a meticulous, organized, borderline-OCD, type-A person stuck in this hell-hole of a situation living with 5 slobs. The baby has an excuse. The twins are 4, so they are still learning about personal responsibility. Robby has ADHD and could care less if we lived in a pig sty. He loves junk. He sees potential in every piece of garbage he sees. Hubby's ADD has him in his virtual reality by way of online community or fiction novel every chance he gets. He doesn't have any sense of routine or self-motivation when it comes to chores. He doesn't seem to see clutter and mess until it starts driving me up the wall.

My tolerance of mess has grown considerably, out of necessity of preserving my sanity, but that has turned out to be a bad thing. I forced blinders upon myself in order to not go completely insane, and all of a sudden my friends are performing an intervention regarding the condition of my house. Yikes.

So now I must end this vent so I can go attend to one of the 2,836,455,238 things on my to-do list. I do feel a little better now, but I still want to go curl up in my bed and sleep until someone else is finished de-cluttering and organizing my life.