Sometimes, in a house with eight people, six kids, and a whirlwind of daily chaos, you have to adjust your expectations. You can’t have a spotless home all the time—it’s just not realistic. But what you can have is one small corner of peace. One tiny slice of calm that belongs to you.

At some point, I realized: it’s not a lack of storage. It’s the sheer volume of stuff. Eight people generate an impossible amount of things, and while I can control my own little corner, I can’t control everything that walks through the door—or gets carried in by my kids, dog, or Amazon deliveries.

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.

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.”

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.

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 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.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve walked in, ready to collapse into bed, only to find my so-called sanctuary buried under things that don’t even belong to me.

because the gaming place we were heading to has $15 flatbread pizzas that feed maybe half a person. And I was not about to mortgage the house to feed 10 teenage boys. CiCi’s “all you can eat” was the only logical answer

he role was challenging to get internally, but I thought, what the heck? I tried. Almost instantly, I was rejected. No interview, no chance to talk to the hiring manager—just a quick decline. I was fine with it. It happens....

Life and the economy have caught up with us. Over the past two months we've had to replace brakes, align and repair tires, fix a cat's broken leg, put 8 stitches into my son's face, our washing machine is broken, and the rear a/c just went out on our van.