The best investment
There is exactly one item in our monthly family budget that I will fight tooth and nail to maintain. I’ll go without my weekly Mega Latte runs or going to eat if I have to, but I am not giving up my most favorite budgeting splurge.
What is it, you ask?
Our housecleaners. The sweet, sweet ladies who clean our house every week. And who save my sanity over and over again. I swear, they are the best marriage therapy my husband and I could ask for. And for the hour or so after they finishe but before my kids get home, I just adore how clean our home is.
Everything is picked up and in its place. My floors aren’t covered in random crumbs and dog hair. The kitchen table is miraculously not sticky. Things that I didn’t even know you were supposed to clean are spotless.
It’s amazing. Something I never really knew to value until we had kids and our life got busier than I thought was ever possible.
And yet….
Even as I sit there, enjoy the quiet and clean, I look around and it doesn’t quite feel right. It doesn’t feel like us. And while I would never admit this to my family, I secretly kind of looking forward to everyone coming home and leaving their shoes all over the place. Because as much as I hate fighting the fight of 9 bodies living in one space… I do love the visible evidence that this is their space just as much as it is mine. Because I know that someday, my kids will learn to pick up after themselves without me having to remind them. And someday they’ll go off to college and their evidence with only be around at the holidays and over breaks. And then they’ll have a house of their own, and keeping my own home tidy and clean will suddenly be very, very easy.
This season of life I’m in right now, it is messy. And that’s okay. And as much as I love our housecleaners, I also love what the mess represents. Which is one reason I am so passionate about in-home sessions being authentic. If you’ve been wanting to book an in-home session with me but have worried about your home being messy, let me just say this: spotless is boring. And someday you might just miss that mess, or at least what it represents. And that’s the power of photography. I can bring you back to what this moment feels like, long after it’s gone.
Mess and all.
XOXO,
Kellie
