It’s hard for parents to keep track of all that needs to get done for their families and still maintain the stereotypical “picture perfect life.”
For some, it’s easier to keep a clean house than others. There are so many factors that determine how much time you can put into tidying your home. How many kids you have, how many hours you work at your job, how healthy/mobile you are, and many more things impact how likely and able you are to keep your house in tip-top, visitor-ready shape.
Like many busy moms with small kids, Clint Edwards‘ wife, Mel, doesn’t have all the time in the world to devote to keeping house. But when Clint’s mom brought up their less-than-tidy house to him in conversation, this husband of the year had an amazing response — which he’s since shared online.
Scroll through below to see what Clint had to say to his mom!
Thumbnail Photo: Facebook / No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog
Clint Edwards is a dad who runs “No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog.” He and his wife, Mel, have three children.
Clint’s immensely popular blog and Facebook page chronicle his adventures in daddyhood. Clint explains that he didn’t have a dad in his life when he was a child, so he had no one to turn to for fatherly advice. He’s winging it and sharing tons of humor and wisdom along the way.
In a heartwarming post shared to his own Facebook page and then picked up by Love What Matters on August 22, 2017, Clint tells the story of a conversation he had with his mom about the state of his and Mel’s home.
Since the time of posting, Clint’s words have been shared over 3,000 times.
Clint writes:
A few weeks ago I was chatting with my mother over the phone when she said, ‘Doesn’t it bother you that Mel won’t keep a cleaner house?’ It was a Saturday. I was working on the dishes. I honestly didn’t know what to say. My mother didn’t say it in an antagonist way or anything. It was more out of curiosity.
She’d obviously noticed that our home wasn’t all that tidy. Not that it was only Mel’s job to clean it. I see our marriage as a partnership, so cleaning is as much my responsibility as it is hers.
I will admit, though, there is often kid clutter, dishes in the sink, and half finished art projects on the counters. I will also admit, it isn’t as clean as my mother’s home, but that doesn’t bother me. In fact, I don’t really think about that at all.
I didn’t really know how to respond to my mother, so I floundered. I never really know what to say in moments like this. But thinking back, I believe my mother’s perception of our house really reflects the era she grew up in.
She’s part of the baby boom generation. I didn’t know my father all that well, but I do remember him giving me this advice about picking a wife: ‘Stop by her house unexpected. See how it looks in there. You can tell a lot about a woman by how she keeps her house.’
I think my mother’s concern over a clean house has a lot to do with her trying to meet the expectations of her youth.
But the thing is, unlike my father, I didn’t really think about a clean house when I married my wife. I thought about how I liked what she had to say. I thought about how she made me feel.
I thought about how she smiled a lot. I liked that. I thought about how she was sweet and thoughtful, and how she seemed like the kind of mother I’d want for my children.
After a few moments of struggling to find the right words, I finally said, ‘I didn’t get into this marriage for a clean house. I got into it because she seemed like someone I could spend my life with.’
Silence.
I put some dishes in the washer. Eventually mom said, ‘Well… that probably is more important than a clean house.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I think so too.’
Clint really knows what’s important in a loving, healthy marriage.
Are you as moved as I am by what he has to say about his wife and all of the qualities he loves most about her?