A Completely Uncalled for Rant While I Sit Here on Yet Another Sick Day

Alright, this spiel may alienate many of you who are reading this, but I figure, there's got to be some people out there who may agree with me.  Hopefully.  Maybe.  Please, if you're out there, let me know!

I've only been in blogging land for about 2 months, but I follow quite a number of blogs and am really trying to "get out there".  I've noticed that the blogs I follow (is it just me?) seems to be very reflective of an upper middle class lifestyle, with large homes, beautiful kitchens, elaborate craft rooms and super moms.  Of course, this no doubt is brought on by a certain jealousy of said large homes and craft rooms, but is there a certain irony in upcycling an old t-shirt on a $900 craft table to save some money?

And seriously, how do people do it?  How do you clean and decorate your house like it's an Elle Decor photo shoot?  After coming home from work each day, making/eating dinner, and juggling the post-dinner baby routine, I'm WIPED.  I look at the mess in my living room and think "tomorrow is another day".  If I really wanted to pick up every piece of Duplos and search for that missing blue stacking cup, I wouldn't be able to plop my butt into a chair until 10pm, at which point I should really be thinking about bed, because, in a whole other sense, "tomorrow is another day".  That's just the cleaning up part, and cleaning in our average sized 1920s center-hall colonial is a constant business.  Between dog toys, baby toys, dog hair, my hair, and dust (which is a fact of life when you have no central venting air flow system), there is no such thing as CLEAN.  There are only relative stages of "clean"...as in, oh look, the dust bunnies are not as big as elephants today!  And "clean" only lasts a very finite period of time, usually less than a couple of hours, and only at night.  If Josh is awake, and I put away his Duplos blocks, he stops whatever he's doing to come over and proceed to dump them right back on the floor.  Same goes for those blasted (but cute) Melissa and Doug puzzle pieces, and wooden blocks, and play food, and his bin of toy cars.  

This is about as neat as it gets, for toys.

So I ask again, how do YOU do it, supermoms?  How do you finagle a moment in your house where there is no clutter?  Where every single item is stored away, out of sight.  All books, playstation controllers, remote controls, sippy cups, random socks, blankets, cell phones,  head phones, pencils, and the odd bottle of hand sanitizer that never seems to have a permanent home.

Ok, let's suppose your house is clean, and I mean REALLY clean and devoid of clutter.  Do people really decorate like Better Homes and Gardens in real life?  Where the sofa matches the chevron carpet matches the end table matches the coffee table matches the coffee table books matches the perfectly framed professional photos on the matching stenciled wall?  My husband and I had our own lives before we got married, and that means we had our own STUFF.  When we joined our households, we obviously joined our furniture (and our clutter), so it was difficult to truly DECORATE a space when you have a bachelor's stuff mixed with the stuff of a chick who used to dream of decorating.  We have an old tv, a college style halogen lamp that tilts like the tower of Pisa, a white couch that is no longer gleaming white, and a loveseat with an off-white slipcover, also no longer gleaming off-white.  I try, I really do.  Do I just sell off everything and buy all new, matching things?  Or did I make a mistake in not registering for everything in my fantastically food-oriented wedding?

Our house is not photo-shoot ready.  I am not going to provide a house tour and show off my amazing decorating skills.  Our house is a conglomeration of everything in our lives, thrown together haphazardly.  My Pinterest "yellow and gray" guest bedroom looks nothing like my Pinterest inspirations, but it also cost me next to nothing to put together. Other than a gray re-upholstered headboard with $15 worth of Ikea fabric, it's basically a collection of EVERY yellow item in my life, in 50 different shades of yellow.  The duck stuffie I got in Taiwan.  The darker yellow throw I received as a gift from years ago.  A lemon yellow print I concocted from a Pinterest idea.  Old yellow pillowcases that are losing the vibrancy of their original color.  An old lamp spray-painted with the only yellow paint I could find at Home Depot.  Oh well.  Isn't that the meaning of upcycling?

Maybe I will show off my house, my non-matching, non Elle Decor, only use what you have already to decorate, full of clutter but well lived-in, house.   

Despite my jealous ranting, I am absolutely in awe of the blogging supermom, a peculiar species all her very own, of which a part of me aspires to be.  That she can clean her house, decorate it beautifully, get dinner on the table, spend time with her kids, spend enough time with her husband to have more kids, make money on etsy, and take gorgeous pictures of it all to share with the world is beyond amazing, and completely incomprehensible to me.  So, if you are a supermom, share your secret.  How do you do it?  DO you do it?  Or do you have an army of shoe-making Keebler elves come in at night with magic wands and homemade cookies?  Pray do tell, so I can become one of you.  

Although, if it requires a lot of time or money, then maybe I'm not as interested.  I like to sleep and I like to eat, and I'm much too in love with my cozy imperfect life to throw that much time or money into making it perfect, at the loss of good food and good sleep.