Stuff I Know #6

It's time for another Stuff I Know installment. Again my disclaimer that these are my own opinions and are intended mainly for my children. I'm not trying to influence anyone other than them. Today I'm saying Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and it's Almost ALL Small Stuff. 

Maybe because I am the mother of multiple sons...multiple, multiple sons. When you have that many boys running around doing things that you...who only had one brother who was much younger... could never even conceive of, you just have to learn to go with the flow and give away some of your more compulsive tendencies. Ok, so I had to keep one or two just for the sake of my own sanity but really, a closet organized by color being your Happy Place and obssessive meal planning isn't that bad......is it?

When they are wrestling on the floor of the living room, when they are holding belching contests, when they are tracking mud in and holding up jars of grasshoppers for you to admire, when every dinner time conversation includes a discussion about passing gas, when haunches of exotic meat appear on the kitchen counter to be butchered, you learn not to sweat the small stuff. Because it's not about the latest and greatest home decor (which I wouldn't have anyway, since I didn't get that gene...). I knew the moment my husband put the first dead thing on the living room wall that I was never going to have one of those magazine article homes. My home is not stylish. It is comfortable.

It's not about keeping up.

I loved this quote from one of my favorite blogs, Our Best Bites. The author was talking about the pressure that women feel about keeping up.

"If you spend any amount of time browsing the internet, you know what it takes to be an ideal wife and mother. If you read enough blogs or spend enough time browsing Pinterest, you’ll know that you need to…

*Prepare 3 healthy, homemade, preferably organic meals a day.

*You’ll need an elaborately simple system for folding and organizing your laundry.

*Due to a system of charts, your house will never be more than 10 minutes away from being company ready.

*You’ll properly display your family with their coordinating heights and ages in a vinyl decal on your minivan.

*You’ll send your daughters to school every day with a different hairdo, most of which involve mastering curling their hair with a flat iron and twisting elaborate shapes into her hair, fastened with giant bows and flowers that you have on a color-coded hair-bow organizer that you made yourself.

*You’ll never buy eggs from the store—if you’re a good mom, you’ll build your own chicken coop in the backyard and paint it a popular Benjamin Moore shade where your free-range chickens can happily lay their organic eggs.

*You’ll have professional portraits taken on a very regular basis. They should always be taken outdoors, either on abandoned rail-road tracks, in front of an abandoned burnt-down graffitied building that’s clearly unsafe for children, out in nature, but with items that don’t naturally occur in nature, like the big velvet couch that mysteriously appeared in the middle of a wheat field.  Bonus points if you get at least one shot with your family holding hands while walking away from the camera.

*You’ll reupholster all your old furniture in funky, hard-to-find fabrics.

*Your kids clothes will be made from your husband’s old work shirts.

*At some point, you’ll consider redecorating your whole house with owls.

*You’ll definitely make all your own baby food because it’s just as easy as buying it at the store, and everyone knows that your babies will grow up with above-average intelligence and be better-looking in adulthood. Because of your homemade baby food.

*And finally, if you don’t simultaneously bargain shop AND shop at Anthropologie, you might as well not shop at all."

I've come up with a term for this. I call it Instagram Idealism or maybe it should be called Pinterest Paranoia. Either way, it's just a modern techno-term for what used to be know in my generation as, "Keeping Up With (or being better than) the Joneses." In reality though, life really isn't about perfectly coordinated birthday parties (although I will admit to a Dinosaur Dig, making a pirate treasure cake, and spraying dowels and wooden stars gold for a fairy party...sure, I got sucked into the myth just like a lot of others), beautifully re-purposed cupcake stands made from thrift store finds, organic chicken coops or any of those newly-trendy things.

I put this question to my 6 kids...."When you were children, how did you know Dad and I loved you?" And you know what? Not one of them mentioned my attempts at birthday party glory, or what the house looked like, or where we shopped, or what clothes we bought. In fact, not one time did they ever mention anything connected with things. To a child, they said it was the time we spent with them either one on one or just being together as a family. Not being together as a family somewhere spectacular and expensive....just being together doing the same thing at the same time, coupled with expressions of affection.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell my kids is give yourself a break from the pressure of trying to be the perfect Pinterest parent, at least in the sense of the superficial "appearance" end of it. Everybody's Pinterest life is perfect. What goes on away from Pinterest and Instagram is what's more important. Don't get me wrong, they have their uses, and I do use them, but using them as a bar for The Good Life isn't one of them. The small stuff isn't worth agonizing over. Save it for the big things.

 

Comments

[Pam]

I agree. I have much younger friends that have babies and toddlers. Amazing how much they spend on birthday parties, presents, and professional photographers for each event.

[Dani]

Yep! I see all of these things on Pinterest and blogs and I think they are all nuts. The elaborate parties and ways to keep everything in a color coordinated organizing system you hand made from random items. It can be discouraging to see everything you AREN'T doing. I spend a crazy amount of time cleaning, because I can't handle the mess. Other than that, I leave things pretty open. Sometimes all we do is watch a show together, but at least we did it together.

BTW, good to know I am not the only one subjected to my boys passing gas and it being the funniest thing on the planet. I hope it quits being funny one day, but I won't hold my breath.

[your favorite son]

Well, to be fair, I think Dad has some magazine articles that showcase taxidermy.

[Andrea]

Great thing to know.

Every holiday I feel like I need to have a huge pinterest spectacular event. I can't live up to that pressure. St Patricks day we had green pancakes. That's it.
I found when I take the kids somewhere awesome the favorite thing is running through the puddle or rolling down the hill- which can be done anywhere for free. So true that kids just want to spend time together and know they are loved.

[your favorite son's wife]

You got quite a response on this one already, which means you must have really nailed it! I remember one time when spgb#1 was 2 and I was on the computer trying to look up a local event to take her to...you know, to be a good mom and get my child out of the house to something fun... and she came and plaintively put her little hand on my knee and said, "Mommy, you play with me? I need you be my best friend!" Since then it has always been me being reminded as often as is needful (which can be pretty often) that what the girlies really want from mommy is TIME, not events. At least that takes the pressure off of having the perfect treat or whatever because THEY get more enjoyment if they help make it, so perfection is usually out!