🏡 A Truce With My Messy Home
Why I ran from it. Why I now stay.
Hello Restless Ones,
Greetings from the shire as we head into a weekend where I’m gearing up to join Storm at her weekly Stagecoach dance and drama session. Oh yes, It’s ‘bring a parent to class’ day. I will try to hold back, but I am VERY excited. I don’t think she knows what’s coming.
A reminder about next week’s live chat with
. April 9th, 7.30pm.📆 Click here to add it to your calendar
Download the Substack App to join us if you can for a natter about her new book: Walk Britain. Restless Rebels will get the full recording of the chit-chat afterwards.
In the meantime, enjoy this week’s post and have a lush weekend,
Anna xx
A Truce With My Home
It’s morning time and I’m sitting at the table in my living room. Sunlight is pouring through the window. There’s a steaming bowl of noodles in front of me — stacked with fresh crunchy vegetables, as well as two candles I’ve just blown out — their wicks still smoking.
On the floor is my yoga mat surrounded by scattered toys; a small pink pushchair, tipped onto its side, firetrucks (assorted), a tractor, a Playmobil Zebra and several puzzle pieces.
Having actively chosen to stay in the house this morning, I feel strangely at peace.
Love at First Sight
I’ve had a rollercoaster relationship with this house over the past five years. We bought it when the pandemic was in full swing.
I was pregnant with Storm when Jamie and I rode our bikes from the flat we were renting nearby to do the viewing. The estate agent was well-to-do and I remember feeling embarrassed that we’d turned up on our crap bikes, wearing tracksuit bottoms.
I took a video on the day we viewed the house. It was a sunny spring afternoon, and the garden was in bloom.
The video shows me moving under the large wisteria — white and lilac petals dripping from a pagoda. I move past two enormous birch trees, under a hedge archway, towards a pond filled with lilies and, against a backdrop of chirping birds, all you can hear is me saying is:
‘Fu*k, fu*k, fu*k, Oh no. Oh Fu*k.’
The swearing is because I adored the house, and I wasn’t supposed to adore it. I wasn’t allowed to. We’d only really come to see it as a benchmark for other viewings. I couldn’t possibly think that something as grown-up as this could be mine.
It was love at first sight.
Three weeks after we moved in, I gave birth to Storm in the living room.
The Quiet Years
I don’t remember much of what went down through those early years as a newly formed family of three. We couldn’t go anywhere, even if we wanted to and I remember life, and the house feeling… quiet. When I think of that time, I think of blankets. Of snuggling and sleeping. Storm taking long afternoon naps on my chest on the sofa. Soft skin. Soft pillows. Everything soft.
Yes, sometimes I needed space — a different space, but mostly, I was happy to come back to the house.
The Village Moves In
When the twins were born, the change of energy was electric. We went from a family of three to a family of five overnight. Having that many small humans to look after meant that the days were spent hopping from one task to the next — cuddling, feeding, changing.
I needed a shedload of help and, for the first year, there was always someone else in the house from morning until night — Nanny, Grandad, Auntie, some paid help, a friend.
Home became a little less mine. It now belonged to the village we’d invited into it — which was strange in one way and beautiful in another.
The number of times I’d sit on the sofa, breastfeeding the twins and, even though I was there, I wasn’t really there at all. Life was going on around me — a whirlwind of chatter and movement and doing.
At first I resisted having so many people around — trying to keep some part of the house sacred. But I soon gave up on that idea. I needed helping hands more than I needed sanctuary.
And there was always the intention to step outside, even if it was just into the garden, but if I found a sliver of time I prioritised other things; a shower, a nap, teeth brushing. Minutes blurred into hours and sometimes I’d look up and realise that I hadn’t left the house in days.
The House Vs Me
After the twins turned one, we didn’t need as much help, and so the village thinned out. It was high time. It was the right thing to do.
But with that came a change in ‘the load’. Even though the demands of the kids were less, I’d started working again and with my attention now directed beyond the home, the demands within it seemed to grow.
Every square inch of it wanted something from me.
The kitchen counter collected spatters of milk and tomato pasta faster than I could wipe them away. The bathroom silently judged me for the limescale and there was a patch of dark mould in the back far corner which always caught my eye, but I never had the energy to do anything about. It just hissed every time I was near it.
And the cycling of clothes. Oh the clothes. Keeping on top of who was growing in and out of what was ENDLESS.
I felt like the house was against me a separate entity — with wants and needs that I just couldn’t fulfil. Which is ridiculous because the house doesn’t speak, so where was this voice coming from?
Home became a reminder of all the ways I felt like I was falling short.
The Great Escape
At that point, leaving the house was no longer a choice. It was something I had to do. The moment Jamie suggested at the weekend that we ‘just hang out at home’ for the day, my chest would tighten. I would feel immediately suffocated at the thought.
There’s an expression often used of ‘climbing the walls’. But it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like the walls were climbing on me. I loved family time, but doing it within the home didn’t work anymore because ‘home’ had become a taskmaster.
The only way to get all the asks of home to pipe down was to physically remove myself from them.
And so it became routine — whenever I had a day to work and Jamie left with the kids, I would bolt from the house. It was a default. Staying in just wasn’t a thing I did. Because that would mean listening to the whispers, and feeling like nothing was ever enough.
Something Shifted
In the past month, something shifted.
It started with the need to be at home for a phone call, and lingering after then. I enjoyed it. Being at home, in my home, in the quiet. Rather than dash to the local cafe, I stayed put and had a cup of tea instead. And it was…nice.
One morning, instead of doing one of my sporadic yoga sessions in the cold garage-gym, I rolled out my mat on the carpet in the playroom. It was warm, welcoming. I thought the playroom mess around me would be a distraction, but I soon became blind to it.
I repeated the process on another day. This time I went all in. I lit some lemon candles, flung open the doors to the garden, and let a cool breeze flow through. I did 45 minutes of Kundalini Yoga (my new fave thing).
I’ve even now started staying in the house to write. I can’t remember the last time I felt relaxed and free enough at home to do that.
The Truce
And so I’m in a process of reclaiming my house.
There will always be scattered toys and the washing load will multiply while I’m not looking. But I’ve called a truce. ‘Let’s not fight anymore’, I’ve said. I’m tired of it.
The house, which once felt like a conveyer belt of endless demands, has become a sanctuary again. Not because it changed, but because I did. Because I have popped on a new set of life-goggles. Ones which don’t just see what needs to be done, but can also see what I can create here. What I can take up space for.
So today, I will sit in the sunshine and eat my noodles surrounded by the evidence of a messy life. I’ll settle down to write in that mess. Because maybe the house and I have more in common than I realised. It will always be a work in progress. And so am I.
p.s 👆🏻❤️ P.s Tapping the little heart icon at the top or bottom means that more people will see this post, and it mysteriously tops up my writing juju for the following week.