The Exhausted Dad: Calling foul on the clean houses

The neat and tidy people of the world need to spill their secret.

I can attribute the messiness of my life to three things:

1) A rebellious attitude that questions authority and the “must dos” of the world.

2) A tendency to collect items that take up too much space.

3) Living with four children.

People can have these same three things and still live in tidy houses I suppose… so long as Thing No. 1 doesn’t prevent one from obtaining enough space for Things No. 2 and 3. Me being me, however, makes it so I’m trapped in the same-size house for the next 30 years, minimum.

It’s easy to blame a house full of busy school-age children as the reason for a messy house, and, look, those four neurodivergent rascals are absolute slobs. Their clothes are everywhere. Nobody remembers to put their dinner plates away. They toss toys and books on the floor in front of empty toy shelves and bookcases. Approximately 9,550 pieces of “art” litter every corner of what seemed like a perfectly sized house just a few years ago.

Really, though, cleanliness has never been a strong attribute of myself or my wife, as proven whenever we look back at photos from before we had kids.

“Oh, look, there’s a cute photo of our old dog, Mazie from right after college… standing in-between piles of mail, books, water bottles and clothes.”

It stands to reason that two messy adults might spawn four messy children.

I wouldn’t say we’re an unclean family. The dishes and laundry are handled regularly, and we’ve made sure to keep odorous things like old food and worn underwear in their proper places until cleaning/disposal. I think I’m quite good at household chores… at least in starting them.

We’re the family with piles of clean, folded clothes covering our couch. We do our schoolwork and work diligently… and leave them sprawled across any flat surface that will contain them. A completed puzzle will cover the kitchen table for weeks at a time. As I’m typing this, I’m glancing over at a Pokemon game board and dozens of cards strewn about the floor of the office. My boys are in the middle of a game! They started the game last weekend and haven’t touched it since.

Recently, my oldest son went to go spend the night at a friend’s house. When he came home, I asked him if he ever wanted to have his friend come over for a sleepover at our house.

“No,” he said. “It’s a little too messy in here.”

I reminded him that we recently cleaned up (for hours) for his cousins to visit. It included a massive reorganization of his room, which he shares with his younger brother.

“You’d just need to clean your room up a bit,” I said.

Him: “That’s OK. I don’t want to do that.”

Therein lies the problem. At the end of the day, the house is mostly functional, except maybe the stairs to the basement where I keep stumbling over the 16 pairs of shoes that could just as easily sit nicely on a show rack in the entryway closet. And yes, MY shoes are in the way too. Because I’m not one of the tidy people of the world.

Really, though, tidy folks, are you spending all your free time cleaning your house? Is everything just stuffed in the garage when I come over? You’re making us messy people feel bad. Are you using housekeeping services? How much do they cost?

Because I don’t have that much spare money on account of that whole Thing No. 1 from above. I also just bought 12 unnecessary things from Amazon (Thing No. 2) and I don’t have anywhere to put the shipping boxes (recycling bin is always full… on account of not breaking the boxes down, because you can’t make me). And, yes, I have FOUR kids (Thing No. 3) which is probably more than you. I assume similarly-sized families keep their piles of books on the floor in front of the empty bookselves and all their shoes on the stairs rather than the empty shoe rack.

If you do have four kids and a clean house, please keep it to yourself. Don’t ruin this theory for me. I just stepped on one of my kids’ open, three-ring binders. I need a win (and a bandage).

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids (ages 6-12). He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.