ROADTEST: "I loathe mess, but embraced it for a week with 3 kids under 9. Here's what that rollercoaster looked like."

If you walked into our home on any given morning, there’s a chance you’d walk straight back out again as you’d be unable to locate the person you’re looking for, in amongst the chaos.              

With three kids under nine years old, one manic dachshund, two cats and two parents currently working from home, ‘controlled chaos’ is kind of our default state.  

Throw in a lengthy lockdown, remote schooling and that little thing called school holidays, and sometimes the ‘controlled’ part of the equation gets thrown out the window. 

Thankfully, I’ve found some ways to embrace the crazy. 

After walking the parenting path for close to a decade, I’ve learnt that expectations are there to be challenged, a certain level of insanity is just part of life, storage baskets are a busy parent’s best friend and a good stain remover in the cupboard can keep even the messiest of moments under control.

(I'm at one with the Sard Super Power Stain Remover spray in our house. Ah, how much do I love thee? Let me count the ways.)

Here’s what my week of embracing our life of messy, well-meaning chaos looked like, and what we actually do to keep the wheels in motion with all of us under one roof.

1. The washing is truly never-ending, but there’s a silver lining.

With a 5-person family, we generate a lot... of laundry. 

I am still not convinced there isn’t another family secretly living in the loft, throwing their dirty washing into the hamper. 

There are days where I fear being buried alive beneath the clean washing pile, just casually waiting my new turnaround time of 7-10 business days to be put away. 

I’m not going to lie; piles and piles of washing around the house puts me on edge. But for my kids, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. 

This is precisely because piles of washing mean they can play "swimming pools" where they dump everything out onto the floor (please keep me in your thoughts) and "swim" through it; racing each other from one side to the other (and bonus points if it’s fresh out of the dryer and warm). 

They are also partial to a fort or 50, where our clean sheets, towels and, at times, various pieces of my activewear are co-opted into being walls and doors for said fort. 

They’ll then often play inside their creation for a solid hour, meaning that the house looks like a laundromat. The silver lining: I get some time to work or hide and drink a hot cuppa uninterrupted, so mentally I (try and) take it a win. 

Image: Supplied.

There are a couple of rules attached to swimming pool dumping and fort building however: whatever gets taken out of the hamper gets folded up and put away afterwards. 

This way, I get a hand with the laundry and house doesn’t remain in a state of disarray for an extended period.

2. Cooking and crafting, just without the carnage.

I love to cook. My kids love to cook. 

They also love to craft, paint, garden and do anything that involves them getting as messy as humanly possible. 

I think this must be part of the childhood manifesto they all secretly sign; never allow yourself to go a day without requiring at least one change of clothes.

Even my nine-year-old still struggles to keep a shirt clean longer than a few hours. 

I have always enjoyed including the kids in the kitchen and in other activities around the house, and lockdown these last few weeks has made this even more of a regular occurrence as we bake our way through days at home. 

There is however no getting around the fact that this both increases the length of the process AND inevitably leads to incredible mess. 

Image: Supplied.

Take this week, for example. My kids had no hesitation cracking eggs and flinging the shells onto the bench top; stirring bolognese with a firm, some may even say aggressive motion that sees the sauce end up all over both them, and the stovetop/splashback tiles/neighbouring coffee machine too. 

They’ll enthusiastically top up the compost heap then wipe their worm and fermented vegetable-tainted hands all over their formerly clean clothes. 

My natural inclination has usually been to restrict these activities because my mind would scream MESS and EXTRA LAUNDRY. But when they get so much joy from it, this week I've particularly been trying to embrace their enthusiasm and just ensure extra time for clean-up (and a constant supply of Sard Super Power Stain Remover in the laundry.) 

Before! Image: Supplied.

Because nobody wants to see the remnants of that enthusiastic bolognese-making dried into a shirt for eternity. 

We swear by the Sard Super Power Stain Remover spray in this house. When you have three (or any) children, you do pretty quickly suss out exactly which product you need to make best friends with to help in the stain department. This is Sard's strongest spray yet, that tackles not only everyday stains but even tough and dried in stains, while still being gentle on the clothes themselves. 

After! Image: Supplied.

A quick spritz on stains prior to chucking in the washing machine, and I’ve got the peace of mind that whatever the kids throw at themselves (or each other), Sard will ensure it’s most definitely a distant memory.

3. Finding ways to contain the chaos and the 5pm shakedown.

I don’t know about all kids, but mine have a lot of what I fondly refer to as ‘tiny cr*p’. 

Think teeny dolls, figurines, plastic toy soldiers, little fidget toys... that type of thing.

Then there are the more substantial items around the house, like Lego, Duplo, Barbies, Textas. With the extra time we are spending at home, it’s not uncommon for all the stuff to be across every surface or floor, across basically every room. 

I mean, sure, that's fine... when it’s being used and played with. Pretty long ago, I stopped trying to tidy up during daylight hours as my efforts were inevitably derailed within seconds. 

Come the dusk hours however, and that's when my seemingly relaxed attitude from daylight hours frays. 

I need to be able to see at least a couple of clear surfaces for my own sanity. 

The 5pm shakedown then comes into effect. It's basically tools-down come 5pm to survey the day's efforts. And then we start to turn the house back into more of a home than a hovel. 

For this task, storage baskets and boxes are my saviour. 

We’ve got ones allocated for all the tiny cr*p, clearly marked (with friendlier wording) so it can be picked up and dumped, even by the three-year-old. 

These can be packed away to be accessed again the next day. I also find it helps the kids to remember all the bits and pieces that they actually own and would otherwise forget about when buried at the bottom of the playroom cupboards.

It’s far from a perfect system but it does help us retain some semblance of order, and stops me having a cry in the pantry at midday; safe in the knowledge that order can (and WILL) be restored later in the day.

That is, until we do it all again the next day.

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Feature Image: Supplied/Instagram @naomifoxall