This is Your Bedroom on Kids

Am I hiding from my kids, or from the state of my bedroom??

Remember back in your pre-parenthood days when your bedroom was a romantic sanctuary filled with scented candles, expensive bedding, and mood lighting?

Yeah, me neither.

It seems like once you become a parent, your bedroom turns into the house dump.  The peaceful, dreamy room that used to be ground zero for "quality time" with your spouse becomes a hub of activity, and I'm not talking about the sexual kind.

If the state of your master bedroom can be described by the following, it's very possible that you are officially someone's parent.

Unmade bed.  I honestly can't remember the last time I made my bed.  Not because I don't like having a beautifully-styled bed, but rather because by the time I actually get a minute to make the bed, it's time to get back in it to sleep.

The only battery-operated item in your nightstand is a Super Hero toy.  In the old days you might have owned an expensive vibrator for which you had a pet name.  Once your kids are able to walk and open your drawers, your little (or big) vibrating friend has to be relegated to a shelf high in your closet where it's sure to gather dust, along with all that sexy lingerie you last wore on your honeymoon.

Lift-the-Flap Books.  I love a good novel, but you'd never be able to tell that based on the reading material currently taking up real estate on my bedside table.  There is no classic literature waiting to be finished, just several tomes of Where's Spot, and a cheap paperback that I started sometime before I gave birth.  In 2013.

The piles of clothes.  In theory it seems very easy to throw dirty clothes into the hamper at the end of the night, but in practice, not so much.  When you're so exhausted that you can barely keep your eyes open at the end of the day, the walk from the bed to the hamper seems longer than a jaunt across the Golden Gate Bridge.  There is also, inevitably, a pile of clean clothing on the chair that you really did plan to use as a meditation area back in the days before you had children and began to fall asleep while attempting to "follow your breath".

Empty glasses.  The reason there are never any clean glasses in the kitchen is because the entirety of your glassware is dirty and taking up space on every available surface of your bedroom.  Science experiments are happening in some of these glasses, and you always intend to take them to the kitchen the next time you head that way, but you never have any hands available because you are always carrying a child (or two), four stuffed animals, and six toys.

Rogue LEGOs.  How do they find their way into your bedroom??? This is the age-old question that all parents face, particularly in the middle of the night, when you step on a very sharp pirate-shaped LEGO while running to rescue a child from a night terror or the stomach flu.

Chargers.  In a misguided effort to keep your children from running off with the cords for all of your devices, you have ended up with a giant tangle of headsets and cords and possibly a yoyo.  You have no idea which charger goes with which device, and you will never have the time to untangle all of the cords, so you may as well just resign yourself to having to charge your phone/computer/Kindle/iPad in your car.

Paperwork.  You always have good intentions of having important discussions with your spouse after your kids go to bed.  To this end, you bring school paperwork, tax forms, or bank statements into your bedroom, but you're so exhausted at the end of the day the only thing you have the energy to discuss with your spouse is whether to watch Hulu or Netflix.  That important paperwork will be lost and forgotten until such a time when you are late and desperately need the signed paperwork which will be nowhere to be found. 

Crap.  I haven't nursed a child for over a year, but for some reason I still have a jar of nipple cream on my bedside table that's missing a top and is covered in dust.  I also have an expired bottle of Colic Calm, a Swaddle Me wrap, and teething toy.  Just a quick reminder that my youngest child is almost two, is large enough to wear the swaddle as a diaper, and has all of her teeth.  I should have the energy to throw this crap away sometime in the next decade. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go unearth my laptop from underneath that pile of clothing so can head over to Pinterest and pin 400 images of perfect, beautiful, no-crap-in-sight bedrooms that I have no hope of every achieving.