Welcome to my lovely spotless kitchen! Take in the beauty! Breathe in and out slowly. Don’t you love the clean countertops and how all the dishes are in the cupboards? 🙂

Okay, okay…Time to get honest: (oh no, right?) Alright here it is:
My kitchen is USUALLY a mess these days.

When I take pictures to share with you all, I am looking for a place on my counter top and I cannot find one sometimes, so I have to shove things over, or pile things up, in order to get a picture. No, really. On a couple of occasions I have even held the food up in the air away from the mess and snapped a shot, just so you would not be distracted by the stuff in the picture that did not belong. From time to time, I do dishes and clean the counter tops just for the next picture I will take. Now, this is not always the case, of course. In fact, 5 years ago when I didn’t have any kids, my kitchen was kept up all the time! Pace of life has changed a little, and here on mealplanningmommies.com we are all about being real, in an effort to encourage other moms, and to let them know they are not alone. The truth is, and I know you have all heard this a million times before, the dishes can wait, it goes by fast, enjoy them while you can, and on and on. ;0)

So, all this to say, I have a picture of my kitchen when ALL the dishes are clean at once, and there are no piles heaping of recipes, bills, things I don’t want my two year old to get to, and who knows what else, off to the side.

The idear for moms to snap before and after shots of a messy, cluttered room, being tranformed was inspired by the lovely Crystal Paine, over at Moneysavingmom.com. I love her and have been inspired by her on several occasions. What’s really funny, though, is that I have tried twice to upload and get my “dirty” picture on here and both times I could not find the pic to upload!!! (true story) Don’t worry; you’ll get your dirty picture. Consider this an IOU.

Update: Okay, here it is…the worst it has been in a long long time. Working 3 days in a row in the evening, and have yet to get to the pots and pans. Nobody else does that, right?

(BEFORE PICTURE)

 

(AFTER PICTURE)

I just have to mention a few things that are cracking me up as I look at the before picture. Consider it like a where’s waldo deal. See if you can spot all of these things in this picture:

1. No paper towel on the roll, and has not been replaced.
2. Pots and pans, and stones all accumulated over 3 days because there were too many dishes in the sink so I could not wash them.
3. Lotion? Hair smoother? I think my 2 year old found them in my room and brought them out and I snagged them from her and they ended up there. 🙂
4. Ice cube trays from making baby food.
5. Water bottles that are needing to make it to the recycling.
6. Bottles that need to make it to the dishwasher.
7. Clean nipples and tops to the bottles in a bottle basket thing, that are clean. (bottles are still in the dishwasher)
8. My daughter’s blankie.
9. Bowl to the slow cooker in the clean dishes rack.
10. And the finale: Two baskets piled on top of each other containing our kids Easter candy, with a container holding dry spagetti in front of it, next to a knife block that has no knives in it because they are all dirty next to the sink.

Ahhh…Welp, guess I will go get started on those dishes now. :0) Hope you are all feeling TEN times better about yourselves by now. As the saying goes, “better to bless than impress”. :0)

Have a blessed day dear mommies.