The state of our kitchen is...

Last weekend I put a sidebar addition with the title, "The State of Our Kitchen Is...". In our home, what our kitchen looks like says alot about where we are in life. If it's messy, that's because we probably have too much going on or are just worn out. If it's clean, that means we probably didn't cook that night and had time to clean or we have to get it clean so we can cook something for dinner cause all the pots are dirty! :) And sometimes it's just decent with a few dishes here and there.

I try to cook a healthy breakfast for my kids most mornings before school so it gets messy in the morning and I head to work, usually without cleaning the kitchen. Then I come home and start fixing dinner, most days, and the state of our kitchen just goes down hill from there. Some of the time, I just don't care because there are way more important things to do than to clean the kitchen. Sorry, Mom, this goes against everything you taught me.

About once a week it gets good and clean but usually it's just "messy but manageable". That's kind of the way our life is most days. We go through seasons in our family life and this one just happens to be mostly "messy but manageable". I have OCD tendancies in the neat freak/organizational area and I would keep my house clean at all costs. But I ask myself daily and sometimes hourly if Jesus showed up at my door, knowing all that's going on in our day, would He care?

Anyway, that's why that sidebar is there. You can pretty much tell where we are in our life by the state of our kitchen. The bittersweet day will come when the kids are grown and they have their own dirty kitchen to clean and mine will stay clean and the sidebar addition will need to be removed. I'm sure if I miss cleaning the kitchen they'll be happy for me to come clean theirs. :)

Update 6/12: I removed the sidebar. Since I'm no longer working outside of the home I figure I should be able to keep it clean so I really have no excuses for it to be dirty. I'm pretty sure I'll be lazy at times, though.