You’re SO Organized

Do you ever read websites or blogs and walk away feeling discouraged or inadequate? Do all of the creative ideas and the before and after pictures leave you wondering why you can’t seem to keep up with what everyone else seems to be baking, planning, painting, or organizing? They’re juggling ten projects while you’re struggling to keep up with the two that you have going?

I hadn’t thought much about it until a fellow dance mom made a comment to me at this week’s class. She mentioned that she read my posts via Facebook and was impressed with how organized I was. Jason just about spit out his coffee (literally!). After I giggled, I assured her that I was NOT a highly-organized person. I even asked if she had seen the pictures of our messy office (which I am slowly but surely making progress on).

Her comment got me thinking about people’s perceptions of bloggers’ lives… about your perception of MY life. Since most times you only get the finished product pictures of what I post, I can see how easy it would be to think that we have it all together. What you don’t see are the three attempts it took to get the recipe right or the stack of papers that were just out of view when I snapped the picture. Did you notice that I didn’t share a picture of our living room with my post about how we pick up toys? That’s because there was a pile of STUFF at the top of the steps right next to the area we recently cleaned up. There’s garage sale stuff, laundry (fortunately clean), an empty storage tub (because we all keep those in the living room, right?), and kids’ clothes my sister-in-law returned. And you know what? It’s STILL sitting there. I have proof:

And if you happened to see my post on Facebook about the huge number of magazines I have waiting to be read, know that I staged that picture too. (It’s true confession time!) This is what it looked like right before I cleared the area to take that picture:

Now that’s a far cry from the photo I posted:

When you read a blog, rest assured that you’re only getting a tiny snapshot of the blogger’s life. You’re not seeing the laundry piles or the takeout containers that have accumulated while they finished that beautiful project you read about. You’re not seeing them accidentally turn off the alarm clock because they stayed up too late hashing out a new idea (Oh is that just me?). You see people putting their best foot forward. Because really… do you WANT to see my laundry basket all the time? Wouldn’t you much rather see my Slow Cooker Vanilla Applesauce or the latest free Kindle books I’ve found? 😉

Yes, some bloggers are uber-organized. But not all of them. Most of us are just like you. Our sites are kind of like the one room you keep clean because people who come to the door can see it. Come past the cleaned-up areas and you’ll find our much-lived-in homes and slightly chaotic lives. I’m going to try to give you more peeks into our everyday lives with posts about organizing. I have LOTS of areas that need to be organized, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.