Learning to Let Go

I wasn’t always the type of person who didn’t like to live with clutter or making a mess, (I’m looking at you teenage Sam bedroom), but since moving out and getting a place of my own, I like things to be put where they are supposed to be and having everything be clean as possible.  Before having a kid this was easy peasy.  Clothes in the laundry basket, counters clean, crumbs nowhere to be seen.  Toddlers kind of take a metaphorical shit on your clutter/mess free house though.  Sometimes they can even take a literal shit on your house.  Toys are strewn everywhere at all times of day, clothes are mismatched and thrown aside from my child who has to go through 47 pairs of pants before deciding on what she’s going to wear (most likely no pants, but that’s another fight for another day).  I can feel my anxiety rising before I even get home from work just knowing what is going to await me.  I try so hard to let these feelings go.  I’ve talked about it before and it’s still a work in progress.  But yesterday morning I had a big win.

Charlotte wanted to play with her toys in the sink and I immediately knew this was going to end in a flooded bathroom.  I felt myself getting anxious about it but I decided I was going to let her do it.  I had to get ready to go shopping with my mom and I figured this would buy me some time.  Charlotte stood on her little frog step stool for almost 20 minutes playing with her toys in the sink.  Was there water everywhere?  Of course.  But she was SO happy and SO good, and when she was done she got down from her stool and asked me to take off her soaked pajama shirt and dried off her toys.  It took me less than 5 minutes to clean up the water that was everywhere.  And I thought to myself, this is just water.  Five minutes of cleanup for 20 minutes of solo play time that made her extremely happy.  I’d say that was a good trade, and I was pretty proud of myself for loosening the leash on myself.  It may not seem like a big deal, but to me it was, and I’m glad I was able to say F it and let her play.

Let them be little, right?  Now if I could only do something about my husband leaving crumbs all over the counter top…