Some days ago someone implied (/accused) me that I “probably don’t allow my daughter to play anywhere to keep my house Instagram ready”. Having a bigger amount of followers always will get you some criticism but you can imagine this one touched me a lot more since she was mentioning my mothering. I’ve been in discussions about this before and I’m always a bit shocked when people think our house actually looks like the photo above – always. In my personal life I don’t know anyone that has a clean house all the time, so why would interior bloggers be any different? Especially the bloggers with children. Because even though we are bloggers, we are still moms and moms have messy houses. Because, you know, kids don’t care about clean Instagram-worthy houses and really, they shouldn’t.
I thought it would be interesting to see if people really wanted to see more “#reallife” on my Instagram and did a little poll in my Stories. I showed a video of our house after our daughter (16 months) played there for some hours. Toys EVERYWHERE, pillows of the couch, chairs moved to the other side of the room – us moms know the drill. And while the outcome of the poll maybe wasn’t exorbitant convincing, still 60% voted they didn’t want to see more of our messy house.
See, I get it: seeing I have a messy house just like you, makes me more human, I really do. But there is another side to this story, as there is always. I started my blog as a way to inspire people with my interior. I shared a lot here: DIY’s, makeovers, stuff I bought. I love to see how you read my articles and sometimes copy me. Try the same DIY’s or buy the same stuff. That’s great! It’s really why I’ve been doing this for almost 4 years now: hoping to inspire you. So my question is: what is inspiring about my mess? It’s a classic two-sides-to-every-story and my part in this play is showing the nice stuff. I agree with a follower that said: “if I want to see mess, I look around in my own house”. Preach :)
Coming back to the accusation that I wouldn’t allow my daughter to play to keep a clean livingroom: okay that’s just bullshit. I know that a lot of my fellow parents decide to change the livingroom because of the kids. Letting their livingroom be taken over by toys and removing all the nice stuff. Well that’s not my style. I love interior and I wouldn’t be happy with a livingroom that has nothing for me in it. So during the day the livingroom is our daughters playground, and when she’s sleeping in the evening we clean up and the room is ours again. And whenever I need to take photos for a blog, I clean up as well. I would love to have a house as tidy as the photo above, but in reality that’s not the case.
Even though I feel I don’t need to defend myself I did find it interesting to chat with so much of you this week regarding this topic. So I decided to write a post about it once more to express my thoughts about this a little more. I did decide I will be sharing some more everyday-moments with you on my Instagram and I’m working on something else as well, that also involves some #reallife. Sorry, can’t share what it is yet but of course you will see it when the time is right :)
