You'll Miss the Mess When It's Gone

Plus, a reminder that there's no set definition of what's normal: "You get to decide what that looks like for your family."

Subscribe to the print magazine to snag one of the last copies of issue no. 8 (and reserve your copy of issue no. 9, coming this October).

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Stuff

Words by Leah Melby Clinton

Being the mother of young children is a life spent perpetually moving things around. You’re fetching and tucking and putting things away; cleaning and rearranging and finding. 

I was tempted to write that I’m feeling it most keenly coming off of a week away where I packed to go and packed to come home and then unpacked it all, but it’s not true. The act of having a mission and a common, oversized canvas tote to toss it all in made the exercise feel more contained than everyday life. It’s those days, the Mondays and the Wednesdays and the Saturday mornings, where the need to gather and prep creeps into every moment, as persistent as the ivy I keep yanking out of our garden.

If I’m tired or annoyed, I’m liable to feel frustrated by the stuff. There’s hardly ever a moment without a mound of toys or discarded clothes. As quickly as I can make headway with the baskets and the drawers, they’re upended again. 

Organization and order? We don’t know them (or at least not for longer than five minutes). 

The sunny flip side of the coin are all the moments where I can see a mismatched sippy cup or a rogue car that’s been abandoned along a baseboard and feel happy. I know I’ll miss it when it’s all gone (whether properly cleaned-out and given away or just stashed in a drawer, able to be left for days and weeks at a time, because the owner will be occupied by big-kid stuff). 

I remember standing with Hannah in her San Francisco kitchen two summers ago and smiling at the pile of tiny plastic dishes and cups drying beside her sink. “We’ll miss this when it’s gone,” I said, gesturing to the tangle that could appear like a jumbled mess to an untrained eye. “Even though the drawers and shelves of kids’ stuff is always messy and falling all over, one day we’ll miss not having it there.”

The constant battle to contain and find and keep all the stuff is one of the more mundane parts of motherhood. It’s the quickest to reveal you as a butler and personal assistant and concierge to the small people who try to rule your world (and don’t even get me started on the part-time job that is moving clothes in and out of rotation if you have more than one child—there’s perpetually a stack of clothes in our basement that either need to be stored or washed and placed in a new bedroom). 

If I’m ever walking from room to room without a half-sipped cup of milk or discarded pair of pajamas I’ve already lost the battle. But the thing is? It’s a fight I’m completely okay with not winning. 

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Swimsuits for your kids and hydration for you, because it’s still summer.

1. Minnow is my hands-down favorite swimsuit brand for my girls. The styles are sweet and classic and look good summer after summer. Case in point: we’ve had these ruffled gingham suits since last year and have been wearing them on repeat again.