What My Life Is Really Like – Why You Can’t Do Everything All The Time

I am so voyeuristic! I watch how to youtubes and have to rewind because I was focusing on their kitchen, lounge room, bathroom, closet or whatever. Mr Ask and I go on long drives and I am staring out the window, wondering and imagining what is going on behind the doors of the passing houses. Mummy Ask has a weird inferiority complex where she imagines that other people’s lives are cleaner/more fun/happier than hers. I think she imagines a Doris Day nuclear family and is chasing that ideal. She must have passed it on because I imagine that everyone is having a life out of vogue living. I read blogs and think how nice the writers lives must be. Neatly forgetting things that happen – car trouble, fights with partners, grief, money worries, illness, meetings with the school and landlords that don’t fix things.

These days my photos are slick (mostly) and with all my cleaning and cooking and cocktails, you must imagine that my life is pretty fabulous. Yeah, it’s not.

I spent a couple of days in the week in my pj’s on the couch, clutching my phone like a rosary whilst using my laptop. Or in my bed. I do this to a soundtrack of 90’s music, whatever is on lifestyle you channel, the toddler downstairs wailing or my neighbor speaking loudly in a foreign language. Occasionally, I wonder if I could just nip to the shops in my food splattered pj’s, would anyone notice?

I spend my other week days with Mummy Ask running routine errands and going to appointments like the hairdresser or dog groomer or waiting for the law mower guy. We like to end the day with a champers in hand, trying to feel pleased with what we have accomplished – even if that’s a little eBay shopping and the subsequent parcel to look forward to.

So, if you are a little voyeuristic too I have some pics of the all the things I haven’t tidied up for a while.

My pantry is on a strictly shove and close the door quickly basis right now. I was cooking recently and found four bags of sugar but not the icing sugar I needed. The day will come when it shits me enough to clean it out, throwing out the out of date things lingering in the back. I will scold myself about waste but despite the guilt I feel sliding a full bag of good food into the wheelie bin, I can guarantee that it will be back in this state in a month or two.

When in my sewing room I am under constant threat of drowning under a sea of fabric headed for the lounge. The cats rearrange it daily for me, adding their own design elements. I tell myself that visitors don’t mind, it’s clearly a creative space. I tell people that the horderesque and frenzied space lets me fully immerse myself in the artistry of fabric manipulation. So there.

See, here’s thing – you can’t do it all, all the time. I keep my house pretty tidy and loo pristine for the following reasons:

Mummy Ask is serious clean and tidy gal, the pics of her house in the renovation posts are how she keeps her home all the time. Admittedly she lives alone but she was even more pedantic about it when I was growing up. It’s not about anything other than she enjoys things this way. She’s often had mixed reactions from visitors to her home. I think that having a clean house is a form of social one-up-manship. In the same way that holidays, cars, well behaved children, money, style and taste become indicators of worth, it’s seems a tidy house is a signal to the world that you have your shit together. But it’s not and shouldn’t be. Lord knows why I feel guilty for not tidying and reading a book.

I guess it all comes back to wondering what everyone else is doing behind closed doors. I used to imagine well dressed, perky couples, preparing for their brunch guests by mowing the lawn, baking brioche and mixing up a jug of Bloody Mary’s. Now I imagine a tired mum with hair scraped into a pony, sporting stained trackies and holey tee, yelling at dad to mow the lawn for the millionth time, over too loud children’s programming, making a Vegemite sandwich while the kids fight noisily and she mutters about losing her sanity! Now you can see me in that awful, wonderful, hilarious light and know that, really, I’m just like you. Welcome home Sisters.

For other posts about my life, check out Bitchin’ in the Kitchen