I’m not a control freak.

This post was written last week. It was a really bad day. I refuse to go through and edit it. It was interrupted (as usual) so the ending may seem … off. There will be more written later. My frustration is growing. A page was accidentally torn from my binder yesterday and I had to leave the room. Hubby fixed it with hole reinforcing stickers; but I was livid. It’s like I’m emotionally sunburned and they all just keep rubbing my skin.

I am a cubbie-hole kind of girl. I like cubbies and boxes and bins. I like having  a place for everything. I like to keep it separated. I don’t want to mix work with home. I don’t want to mix friends with family. I want kitchen stuff in the kitchen, bedroom stuff in the bedroom, and bathroom stuff in the bathroom. I want a school room, a craft room, and an office. I don’t want to find toys outside of the bed rooms. I don’t want a stack of bills on the kitchen table. I hate having to look in the hall closet for extra toilet paper. I like things compartmentalized.

I like my time blocked off as well. Coffee Time- check. Chore Time- check. School Time- check. Cooking Time- check…..check…check…check…. Block it off. Don’t let them get mixed up. I don’t want to hear playing under my feet while I load the dishwasher, cook dinner, and plan out my next blog post in my head. Just typing that sentence made me anxious.

Being a big family, even a smallish big family like ours, means none of the above will ever happen for me. There will always be something put somewhere else. There will always be something going on under my feet. I am learning to adjust to that truth. Most days, I cling to the knowledge that this is a season that will pass. Some days, I am jealous of the moms who leave home and go to work somewhere away from the kitchen table. I have moments where I am envious of the mom down the street who has time to hone her baking skills in an empty house while her kids are away at school.

I love homeschooling our children. Even if I didn’t feel called by God to educate them at home I would still choose to homeschool them. My passion for it goes beyond just issues of faith. It is my job, as their parent, to provide them with the best education I can. Right now, I am doing that. Right now, I can educate them at home. Right now, this education is better than the education our school system can provide. Next year, the tables could turn, and I could be in a position to have to work. Then the best I could do would be to put them in school. But right now, this is the best I can do. I do it willingly and joyfully despite the mental challenges it causes me.

Having them here all day long, almost every day, is mentally exhausting. There is stuff everywhere. There is never a time where there isn’t someone taking something out, making noise, asking questions, spilling something, or crying. My mind wants to shut them out.

“Don’t talk to me now it’s cooking time.”

“That is not the school area, you can do that but it must stay in the designated school area.”

“Why are you coloring in the hallway while I clean the bathroom? This is chore time, go do something somewhere else.”

I don’t say these things out loud. I do say them in my head. Right this very minute I am almost in tears because the disorder around me (and really it isn’t  that bad) is so distracting I can barely focus on what needs to be done next.  I just offered to pay our oldest daughter a dollar if she would play with her siblings outside (in water, I know it’s hot) for one hour. ONE HOUR. That’s it. She’s been to the back door at least 4 times in the last 30 minutes, asking me how much longer.

My brain isn’t functioning well trying to jump from math to the dishwasher to wiping a butt to have you read your book to is the washing machine done yet. I keep thinking that if everyone just took five minutes to put things up where I want them then the family would flow better. That won’t fix it thought. They are flowing just fine. Everyone else is functioning just fine.

I’m the one flipping out on the inside.

I’m the one that feels overwhelmed when there is nothing going on.

They are good kids. They play. They want to be near me.

I want them to be near me.

On the outside, they see me let them play under my feet. On the outside, they see me let Lil Man climb on my back while I lay on the floor doing puzzles with them.

On the inside, I’m crying. I just want them to go play quietly, in another room, so I can move on the next thing. I want the world to stop needing me so I can do my “jobs”. Sometimes I think that if they went to school it would be different. Homeschooling just seems to add another block of time and another cubbie of things that get all mixed up with the normal mom things.