Confessions of a burnt out mom

Dh and my bedroom looks like it belongs on that hoarders show... There is clean laundry from wall to wall and the sheets are badly in need of changing.. Our master bathroom is beyond shameful... Dh and I live in fear of someone accidentally opening our bedroom door.. We keep saying we are going to get it cleaned up but by the weekend or at the end of an evening we are so exhausted we can barely move... Much less clean... I have attempted to fold clothes several times but it gets put in a laundry basket and never gets put away.... Only to end up in the dirty clothes pile again....the rest if our house is presentable and usually clean... But God help us if anything were to happen to dh and I and someone were to have to see our room and bathroom!

My 11 month old son is like a puppy... He eats food off the floor and sometimes I don't have the energy to stop him from doing it....

Everything in our home is broken, the walls are smudged, the kitchen never seems clean, and I feel like I live in a giant childproofed playpen.

I told my twin dd's that fire and spiders live in the cord to the lamp and that if they touch it they will be burned or the spiders will bite them. They haven't touched the cord in a week...

I think of going to work as a break. I am a therapist in a school district and I can't wait to go back to work part time in the fall...

I am scared of getting pregnant again... Scared is not even the right word... Terrified is more like it.... But we do want more children someday.. This doesn't even make sense....

I am very scared of breaking a limb or having the flu or a bad cold or.... Because there is no reprieve... We have come to the realization that as much as our fam or friends say they would help in a desperate situation they never do.... Sometimes I wonder what i would do if I had a broken arm... I guess I would manage somehow!

I think I will stop here before I really embarrass myself.... Hahaha! Have any confessions you'd like to add?

 

I completely understand and feel the same way...I literally could have written your post! Hang in there!

 

I completely understand and feel the same way...I literally could have written your post! Hang in there!

 

Oh! I remember those days. I PROMISE that it gets more manageable!

I worry that my kids are going to remember me as the grouchiest mother ever. All I do I nag and correct and redirect. Poor chilluns, they're just acting their age and I'm acting about a third of mine most days!

 

Ditto here, and I only have 2!!!

 

I think many of us remember days/weeks/months like this. It will get better and - more importantly - you will feel like you are managing better!

Could you afford some outside help, maybe a cleaning lady twice a month? Or maybe ask around for a teenager or someone from church (if you belong to one) to help with the laundry or watch the children while you are in the next room and tackle the laundry piles or the bathroom yourself?
Could you set a timer maybe twice a day for 15 minutes, give the children some safe activity on their own (or use their nap-time) and do some speed cleaning or organizing. It is amazing how much that will help.

Restoring some sort of basic order might make you feel better and then you can keep at the most important chores before they pile up and it all seems too much and not even worth the attempt. Try to sit down with DH and find what is most important for both of you to feel comfortable at home; concentrate on these essentials and let the rest go with a good conscience. The children will not remember the smudged walls or the kitchen floors in need of cleaning or the toys everywhere.

 

I know the feeling. I now get a cleaning service once a week and at least the house is clean for 10 minutes. Over weekends (I work) I also try and do some things while they nap, but their naps are never long enough to get everything done. We (dh and I) also take turns to look after the kids, one of us then is able to do something that needs desperate attention.

I agree try and get an older kid to come and play with the twins. They love entertaining them and this will give you a well deserved break.

 

I feel the same way! I can keep the main floor pretty clean and the upstairs where the girls room is is cleaned once a week. Downstairs is a whole other story. My laundry is 4 loads behind always and I'm rather certain that none of my clothes ever get put away.

I can only imagine how much harder it is for you since you have one more who is still so little!

 

I know how you feel and I only have the one toddler running around and I'm still on maternity leave! Heaven help me when I'm back at work and the twins are big enough that they don't stay where I left them any more.

 

Bless your heart, how I remember although it's fuzzy now, those days!!

It does get better, I promise. But you are DEFINITELY not alone!! Hang in there, I spent many days/nights crying and feeling overwhelmed.

There are still days when I have more stuff in my living room from other parts of the house than the furniture that's supposed to be in there, I just have to think what WOULD I do if I didn't have them to pick up after?

 

My clothes rarely, if ever, get folded and put away. We live out of clean baskets. I can keep everyone's clothes washed, and for the most part I can keep the 4 kids clothes folded. My older two kids are finally old enough to put all the kids clothes away. But my clothes are another matter

I don't do dishes every day. I have eczema on the palms of my hands and washing dishes can be very painful. So there's weeks where I load the dish washer twice a day, but my pots and pans stack up. When the hubby has time he'll catch up on the washing for me, but he works 12 hr days a lot of times, and it's a 45 min commute twice a day to/from work. So he's tired when he gets home. When my hands heal up I spend a couple hours washing every pot and pan I own...only to do it all over again in a few weeks

You aren't alone!! :hug: It gets better but I don't think it'll be perfect until the kids move out, and since I'm in no rush for that, I'll take the mess

 

If I didn't have insomnia, I'm sure my dishes and laundry would never get done! There is something relaxing about folding laundry at 2 am though. :crazy: I'm kidding, it's awful.

 

Yeah, my bedroom and bathroom aren't great either. The bedroom has so much furniture that we brought from the living room and cramped it in there - a glass shelving unit, a glass coffee table, a glass side table, an ottoman... Plus we have there an activity center and a jumperoo that the kids outgrew and we didn't get a chance to get rid of them yet...

I finally cleaned our bathroom last week and it feels so nice to have a clean bathroom, but I meant to do it for over a month, and I never got a chance so I know what you mean. About our laundry - I never fold anything other than the towels. I am lucky enough that we have big closets so I put all my clothes and DH's clothes on hangers the minute I take them out of the dryer, and I bring all the hangers in the closets and hang them. The only things that are on shelves are the shorts - but I just pile those on the dryer and then I bring the pile to the closet on a shelf. I have many cheap plastic hangers - all the t-shirts are on hangers. I hate folding and I don't have time for it either. Our clean underwear and socks live in a laundry basket in my closet, I stopped bothering to put those in drawers after the kids were born, but it's a contained mess - in my closet . We have a nice Laundry Sorter and we put the dirty stuff in there every day and when it's full I roll it to the laundry room - so it's not that bad. I love this thing, and the kids enjoy taking rides on it also .

I only have the twins, so my respect for you and others that have other children added to that , at times I wonder how do people do it with more children . And my kids are almost 2 and they still eat stuff from the floor, I stopped worrying about it after a few weeks .

 

You are not alone!! I lived out of laundry baskets (and still do sometimes). Until my twins were 3, I actually only kept a small amount of toys out at any one time, just to minimize the mess.