You know who pisses me off?
Ree Drummond.
She cooks. She entertains. She home-schools. She writes. She does all that stuff and she likes it. She does it well.. And she has done all these things for YEARS. Long before whatever channel she’s on started to subsidize her. She’s like the original mom blogger who made everyone jealous. SHE is the reason we all have Pinterest inferiority complexes. It’s like her entire life has an Instagram filter over it, and that filter is called “Suck it bitches, y’all are nowhere near the domestic goddess I am. And you never will be.”
I used to want to be like her. I wanted to love to cook and take pride in a tidy house and have one of those ridiculous home management binders with printables covered in chevrons and trendy colors. I wanted chalkboard paint mason jars and and a labeled pantry shelves. I wanted to garden and can and make homemade bread in my spare time.
I tried for like 10 years, but I could just never muster the love. I couldn’t love any of the things I was learning. And because I didn’t love them, I didn’t try very hard. And because I didn’t try very hard, it all sucked. My bread was gross, my garden had weeds, my pantry was a disaster. It was very discouraging.
And then I realized that I can’t stand any of that shit and I was making myself miserable.. I don’t want a Pinterest perfect life. I don’t want to find peace in domesticity, grace in a shiny sink. I tried for years. I thought I was failing because I sucked at all those things. It took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t failing because I sucked, I was failing because I didn’t give a shit enough to try really hard.
I mean, I want to want it. I want to want to love it. But, man. That shit is hard, and when you’re in the trenches of motherhood, labelling your mason jars with chalkboard paint seems like an amazing waste of time. I’m struggling to put my kids in clean underwear, I have neither time nor inclination to Konmari their underwear drawers. Does their underwear spark joy in my heart?
That’s just a ridiculous damned question.
Who cares if underwear sparks joy? Who cares if I have a perfectly coordinated tablescape? Who cares if my pantry shelves are labelled and organized by food type?
Answer? Nobody.
Nobody cares about that shit. Not even me. I’d rather spend my time relaxing with my kids, dirty underwear and all. And because I don’t care, I’ll never find it, that domesticity gene. I’ll never care if i’m organized or neat. I’ll never care if I have a stockpile of freezer meals; I’ll never care if I have a cleaning routine; I’ll never care if I have appropriate seasonal decor.
It kinda makes me sad that I’ll never care, because I think it would be nice to be domestic, to putter around the house, tidying and straightening, making snacks for my family, and taking meals to people in the community. It would be cool to want to have my shit together. I think I’m just too lazy though. I’m good with it. Lazy is my jam. It all just seems like too much work.
So Ree can do Ree. I’ll be over here, crumbs on my floor, stuffing my kids underwear into disorganized drawers. When I can even be bothered to take it out of the laundry basket at all.
About the author: Kristi is a stay at home mom with two small boys and a very messy house. She and her family raise goats and pigs and she pretends to know something about homesteading. She went to college in the 90s and didn’t learn much, but she met her husband there, so it wasn’t a total waste of time. They were married a short time later and have spent the last 16 years trying to “settle down” and “be normal”. It’s been a huge and glorious mess. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter or her blog www.freespiritmama.com.
