Why I'm a Hot-Mess Housewife, by Sammi M. (Age 28)

Now, as I said in my "welcome" entry, I am a hot-mess housewife.

First, for all you non-hip white people out there, a definition of "hot mess" courtesy of Urban Dictionary:

1. hot mess
When ones thoughts or appearance are in a state of disarray but they maintain an undeniable attractiveness or beauty.
Although Nichole had just awaken, her boyfriend thought she was stunning - she was a hot mess.

2. hot mess
Someone or Something that is such a mess... the level of it, is off of the charts. It's past pathetic, past pitiful. It's to the point you almost have to walk away to keep from bustin a gut. Hot messes can exist in levels.

i.e. Hot Mess, Hot Fuckin Mess
Oh my God, y'all a HOT MESS!

I'd love to say I lean towards the first definition more (and I'm sure The Hubs would humor me with a "yes"), but I'ma have to call a spade a spade and admit I'm more of the latter. *sigh*

Here's the deal: I did not grow up being made to clean. My dad (who I spent the predominant amount of my childhood with) was not a clean person unless he had a lady spending the night, or his live-in girlfriends made him. My mom was similar, until she married my stepdad (who is a very tidy man), so she let me slide. Then I went to college, and I moved every year, and it gradually resulted in my becoming messier and messier because I cared less and less; I mean, I was only going to be in any particular place for one year, so why bother even unpacking? SERIOUSLY. I didn't unpack anything other than necessities for most of college. I didn't even hang my clothes unless they were nice and needed to be preserved.

My husband is similarly messy, so he didn't mind my messiness as much at first, and we equally let our current apartment get pretty cluttered and ugly. We finally snapped out of it, though, and have been slowly working on changing our cleaning habits and making our apartment a home.

BUT we're still very much a work in progress. I'M still very much a work in progress when it comes to being a "housewife". While our apartment is much less hideous now, we're still lazy cleaners. For example:

• We sometimes let the dishes go for about 2 weeks *eep*.
  
• At any given moment, our kitchen counters are cluttered with spices and other ingredient apparati (apparatuses? apparatusi?)
  
• Our laundry pile is so big, our dog sleeps on it sometimes instead of her dog bed.
• Our main bedroom is basically a storage unit... oh man, if I had less pride, I'd take a picture to show you how bad it is. (Shockingly, I still have SOME pride.)
  

However, we make it our business to scrupulously clean our apartment whenever we have guests over, so our friends (hopefully) never think we're complete slobs. (Just mostly! ;p) We've been so much better about keeping things mostly tidy, it doesn't take us nearly as long to get clean. Our walls are still mostly bare, but I'm slowly adding to them. I've even hosted my first family event successfully!

So, yeah. I am NOT a good housewife. I'm a hot mess when it comes to the domestic arts. So this is my blog to work through that, and help out my fellow hot messes along the way. First step in Hot Mess Housewife recovery: admitting you're a hot mess and how hot that mess is.

I owned up to my stuff. WUT UP. Now as I'm maturing (or at least I hope this is maturity... and not the gradual slip into madness), I'm taking more pride in my home and find myself actually WANTING to clean. (Not that this desire actually leads to cleaning half the time, but at least the WANT is there now! ;p ) Right now I'm working on cooking at home more, getting our bedroom in order, and making our home a little more "home-y" with self-made decorations. As such, my successes (and hopefully rare failures) will be shared with you via this blog for you to use or help me improve upon!