Don't Be The Perfect Homemaker

You would think that it’s only the fashion magazines that put pressure on today’s moms and women to look their "thin best", but I sometimes feel the same pressure when reading home decorating and other women's magazines. 

As today’s moms, we are expected to look like Cindy Crawford, be as thin as Victoria Beckham, mother numerous children like Angelina Jolie, have a career like Kathy Ireland, baking skills like Paula Deen and of course to be ultimate homemakers like Martha Stewart – all at the same time. And let’s not forget that after a long day of fixing kids' lunches, taking them to school, handling our careers or home businesses, picking kids up from school, cooking dinner, decorating the home, baking cupcakes (from scratch) for the bake sales, making sure homework is done and laundry washed and folded, we still need to save some time for our husbands, too. 

We are expected to do all this while looking fabulous, preferably in some designer clothing we snagged on sale from ideeli or Gilt, because today’s mom is a smart shopper. And our homes are expected to look like a nice mixture of IKEA and Pottery Barn catalogs with those famous “personal touches” we home editors like to recommend, so our homes look different than the others in the cul-de-sac.

My question is WHY? Do we really think that we are better moms if we do it all?

Does it make you a better mom if you can cook a nice family dinner every night?

Is your child happier in a well-decorated bedroom?

Will Feng Sui in your home improve your child’s success in life?

Does it really matter whether you buy the cookies or bake them yourself?

While I agree that some of these things matter, I think not only are we putting too much pressure on ourselves, but also on our children by trying to be the perfect homemakers all the time. It’s OK if children mess up their room sometimes, and it’s OK if it’s not perfectly cleaned the way you would like it to be if they did it themselves and are proud of it. It has been very hard for me to let go of trying to be perfect, but I actually think I am a better mom when I let things be less perfect.

As a lover of interior design it sometimes kills me that the kid's room isn’t perfectly decorated and that the LEGOs and books fill the room, and that the walls are full wall stickers and children’s drawings and art they’ve done.  As a foodie I can not stand boxed cake mixes or pancake mixes, but we use them because it’s the only way we’d ever have cupcakes or pancakes in our home nowadays.

I allow myself to be less perfect and more the mom who wants her children to be happy.  Remember, that the essence of home isn’t the walls and the furniture, the essence of your home is your family. Remember to enjoy every day with your family, right now and today, and let yourself  be “less perfect” because believe it or not, your family loves  the “less perfect” version of you – maybe even more than the über-stressed do-it-all perfect version of you.