Your car is disgusting. There are crumbs everywhere and sports gear and stacks of artwork. The back door of your house is bordered by a maze of kicked off shoes and backpacks and winter coats. Your walls have smudges and your windows are covered in handprints. Your laundry room is overflowing.

Good.

That’s how it’s supposed to be.

You have kids.

It would be weirder if it didn’t look this way. What would actually be disordered would be priorities that placed cleanliness over lived-in-ness, spending time admonishing and scrubbing over spending time together, over having fun together, over peace.

There is, of course, some point where it gets beyond reason, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about this perverse impulse to impress people who don’t live with you, about trying to reach some impossible social media standard, about trying to get back to how it was when you were a kid, back, you know, when parents ruled by threats and withholding, when kids were seen and not heard. That’s not how it should be. That’s not what matters!

Your house is for living. Your life is centered around your kids. It makes sense that things look and feel (and sometimes even smell) that way.