This last week while my oldest son was at school me and my hubby went out front with our two kids and decided to wash the van. I love our van, when we bought it in 2005 it was brand new, and I love it....yes I feel like a soccer mom driving it, but it's a really nice van and the kids have plenty of space. Well we went all out cleaning it. We took all the seats out, and the carpets, and I scrubbed everything. It looked like a brand new van again. Then this past weekend we went on a 7 hour road trip to California with the kids and 7 hours back.......well let's just say the van looks worse than it did before we cleaned it. There are squished up cheerio's all over the floor, and odds and ends other snacks floating around. I can't help but almost start laughing when I look at it. I usually get really stressed out about messes, but I'm starting to learn one key thing that I wish someone would have told me when I first got pregnant with my oldest son......."THINGS ARE NEVER GOING TO BE PERFECT ONCE YOU HAVE KIDS." They just won't. There will be messes, and you're going to trip on toys, and have fingerprints on the walls and windows, and probably all over the tv. There is going to be dirty clothes laying around and a sink full of dishes. And you better believe as soon as I put the new table cloth on the table something is going to get spilled on it. But when you try to make the house look perfect, and neat and tidy, you'll miss out on the one important thing......your kids. It can be fun sometimes to just let those dishes sit in the sink for a while longer and sit down and do some finger painting with the kids. Because let's be honest......do your kids really care if the house is clean or messy? Do they care if the new table cloth matches the cloth napkins, and if the coffee table is cleared of it's clutter? And come on now....even if your house is perfect by 1 oclock is it really going to look the same way in about 2 hours. To me it seems like I'll clean the living room and head to the kitchen only to come back to the living room and hav it look like a tornado went through it. Or in my case, 3 tornado's! No my house isn't a mess.....but I'm starting to learn ways around the cleaning that takes all day. I keep a laundry basket in the living room, and at the end of the day, that's where all the kids toys go. When the basket gets too full I haul it upstairs and put them back in the toy room where they belong. I "cheat clean" whenever I have company coming over. It's a quick vaccume, and you spray febreeze and lysol everywhere. And you toss everything that doesn't go where it is in a laundry basket and stick it in the closet and take care of it when you have time. The kids are only kids for a little while. You'll have plenty of time to color cordinate the house when they've grown up. Hang out with them while they still want to be around you....because pretty soon you won't be "cool" enough to hang out with and then what are you going to do?