you know what i hate?

Real Simple magazine. No joke.

Everything within their pages looks so clean and easy to take care of. Unlike my home, which looks like a tasmanian devil just passed through.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Please notice the picture in Exhibit B has a "before" label. If my kitchen looked like that, I wouldn't be redoing it.

The root of my household issues are fourfold:

1. Eva. That fricken kid makes a huge mess and doesn't help clean up.

2. Eva. Taking care of her and making sure she doesn't kill herself takes up time I could be cleaning.

3. Time management. Brandon and I need a better system for who is watching Eva and who is cleaning.

4. I'm not good at cleaning. I'm good at it for a couple days, and then the wheels fall off the wagon and I think spending the evening watching TV on my butt is a better use of my time. That throws the whole system off.

I've been halfway okay at the hour of cleaning a night thing, but I could be better. Plus, there's the issue that I live in university housing. You can only get things so clean. I've learned to let go of that, but it still can be depressing. Also, you can only fit so many things into our apartment. Those that have witnessed the amount of stuff in our little space are constantly amazed. My mother is one of those people.