I didn't tidy up today

Tiny shoes, scattered toys, and the reminder not to rush.

I’m back from nursery drop off. I need a wee. My bladder’s held on through the morning chaos and it’s finally safe to surrender. It’s just me in the bathroom, a rarity these days. So I sit and linger. There’s no rushed wee, no “don’t stand on that!”, no “MUMMY LOOOOOOK!”, no sharp inhale as cold water hits my arse because a tiny hand has flushed the loo while I’m still sat on it.

All is quiet.

Peeing alone is akin to a night in The Four Seasons with champagne on tap these days. So I take my time and enjoy the view.

It’s then that I see them. Sat there. A purple crab and a green turtle. Placed just so, on top of the potty. Two more faces that accompanied my son’s in the audience this morning.

I look around.

To my left 3 wooden cars. Red blue and green. I confess, these have been here longer. Days. Maybe even weeks. I don’t even notice them anymore. Part of the bathroom furniture.

I should move them.

I tell myself I should. And some days I would. But today I don’t.

Most days after drop-off, I do the tour. The reclamation mission. The reset. An attempt at clearing my mind with the physicality of clearing the ‘mess’. The toys, the things, this, that, the other. I walk the house gathering up the breadcrumbs of my toddler’s morning.

The train track left sprawling across the floor, the umpteen Croc Jibbitz *make mental note to check we still have bin man, god forbid we lose bin man*. Put them all back in a dog poo bag holder because where else are you supposed to put them?

The cars, the rogue wooden onion from the wooden pizza that lives in the wooden kitchen, the crayons - the ones shaped like a fish. The stickers on the sofa armrest. The half-eaten sandwich on top of the toy box. The discarded socks from the night before. The pyjamas I wrestled him out of this morning on the living room chair. The giant purple gurning octopus that sits on top. A single croc on the stairs. A plastic knife tucked neatly into the washing basket. The handfuls of cotton wool pads that I begrudgingly let him destroy to keep him occupied long enough for me to do, well anything really.

Mess. Or life. Messy life.

Life with small children creates a particular kind of chaos. Not just physical clutter but mental too. It’s constant tab-switching in your brain. A low, omnipresent background hum.

Relentless. Mental mess. Physical mess. But proof. Proof that he’s here. That we’re here, in this chapter.

Sometimes there’s a yearning for a house that stays tidy, with adult things in adult places. Calm, curated rooms, not a sticky fingerprint in sight. The kind you see online.

But those too, if they’re lucky enough, will have the telltale signs of a little life being lived, messy and joyous, just slightly out of frame.

Instagram is good at hiding the corners.

The mess won’t always be this mess

One day the walls will see only wallpaper, no stickers or chalk. The toys will stay in their boxes, and the bath toys will migrate to the charity shop. Nobody will be leaving half-eaten sandwiches on the toy box because they’ll have been eaten by bigger mouths that finish things in one sitting.

One day I’ll go back to weeing alone. The house will stay tidy and the daily reset will feel redundant.

And when that happens I suspect I’ll miss it.

The evidence of him here, small, busy, pottering.

I’ll miss the sticker piles and the tripping over tiny shoes and feeling crumbs of stale melty buttons in the bottom of my bag when reaching for my phone (the squashed melted butter packet from the garden centre, not so much).

The mess is proof. Proof that the days are full and that we are lucky. Oh, so lucky.

So today I let the cars stay in the bathroom. I left the turtle on the potty. I walked past the sandwich on the toy box.

Because this is the beautiful, frustrating, exhausting, joyful clutter of right now. These big little years.

One day, my house will be tidy, and I will sit on my sofa free of stickers and ache just a little for the chaos.