I Clean, Therefore I Am (Tired) There’s a special kind of exhaustion that comes with being the designated cleaner in a house full of...

Company’s coming in 15 minutes.” Suddenly, your house—full of toys, school papers, laundry, and random crumbs—is a ticking time bomb, and somehow it has to transform into something resembling a home people actually want to be in. Cue the 15-minute fake clean. This is an art form. A combination of ninja-level shoving, strategic placement, and a healthy dose of hope.

Mornings are chaos with six kids to get ready and out the door. Then it’s on to my job, my photography work, cooking, and trying to wrangle a house that constantly feels one step away from being featured on a “before” episode of a cleaning show. By the time the day is done, I’ve squeezed in all the “work work” and the “home work,” and what’s left? Maybe thirty minutes of TV before bed, if I’m lucky.

Cue flashbacks to my last interview, where my 8-year-old walked in wearing nothing but underwear—even though the door was locked. So yes, this time, I was determined to get the background situation under control.

Instead of buying individual meals, we buy in bulk: a couple pizzas, a Bueno box loaded with tacos and burritos, a 30-piece nugget tray from Chick-fil-A, or 40 McNuggets and two large fries for $17 at McDonald’s. Feeding everyone this way saves us at least $30–40 a trip.

Even my husband, who wouldn’t recognize flirting if it walked up and smacked him in the back of the head, noticed. He leaned over and said, “Yeah, she’s definitely flirting.”

But here’s the reality: Marie Kondo doesn’t live in a house with six kids. She doesn’t deal with the endless influx of toys, papers, clothes, random sports equipment, and “I’ll just put this here for now” items that magically multiply overnight. She doesn’t have a kid who hides their art project in the pantry, crams wrappers behind the washing machine, or sticks Legos into the laundry basket.

Her teacher, a wise woman who had also taught my older son, told me: “I think Emily matured so much through her experience that she’s having trouble relating to the other kids. They’re still doing ‘kid stuff,’ and she’s just… beyond that.”

Let me tell you about a little life hack that has been game-changing  for my budget: I detached my credit card from all online accounts,...

So instead of waiting until I have all the shoes lined up perfectly, I’m just grabbing the toddler’s and throwing them in with the next load. Because honestly? I’ll be doing 15 loads of laundry this week anyway. At least two of them will be towels and jeans—the perfect “shoe loads.”

And apparently, my subconscious thought I was the teenager. Because I dreamed I was back in high school, flirting with boys. I woke up with that same old swirl of feelings: nervousness, the rush of excitement, the cautiousness of “I like him but what if he doesn’t like me back?”, all of it. I could practically feel myself blushing in my sleep.

I set a timer, told everyone to grab whatever they saw out of place, and assigned one kid to dishes. And you know what? It worked. Fifteen minutes later, the house looked 100% better. It wasn’t overwhelming for the kids, the timer kept them focused, and while they grumbled a little (because, hello, weekend chores are not their favorite), they survived. And so did I.

We don’t tend to drink much coffee around here. My 14-year-old son does sometimes, so we have some coffee somewhere in the house, but me? I might have it once a month. When I do, it’s usually a frappe from McDonald’s, a large one, $4.19 for pickup. Well, today is fall break for my kids, and I’ve got six of them here four of mine and two extras (my two littles are still in daycare). I really didn’t want to load them all up in the car just to get a coffee, so I thought, let’

Seeing her standing there: backpack on, hair brushed, looking so grown-up and so ready, made me pause. She’s our middle schooler now. My 8th grade son also rides the bus, but his approach is a little… different....

Each school aged kid (we have four of these and two babies) has a daily 30-minute task, and on Fridays, we shake things up: instead of their regular chores, they do two smaller cleaning stints—15 minutes on Saturday and 15 on Sunday. That adds up to an two hours and thirty minutes of weekend cleaning spread over four kids and Mom.

“Henry! Do you have your balls?”…“Henry! Do you have your ball sack?” And then I realized what I was shouting. In public. Surrounded by middle schoolers (insert eyeroll here).

At yesterday’s game, Emily decided she might want to try out for cheer next year. She found some old pom-poms lying around the house and brought them along, cheering along with the squad and beaming with excitement. But then—like most things with an 11-year-old—the novelty wore off. She put the pom-poms down.

I just got rejected from a job interview, but honestly, it was one of the coolest rejections ever.

I try not to live in a totally tech-ruled world. One of the ways I keep some balance is by not reaching for my phone first thing in the morning.

Because do you know what I was doing at that exact moment? Sitting at my desk, staring at my blog. Telling myself I would take a “quick five-minute break” before getting back to my actual work. That quick break? It happened about fifteen minutes ago.