my husband and i once considered buying a house with such an open floor plan that the kitchen could be seen from almost every room of the downstairs. we both loved this house (as long as we were not the ones living in it).

we know ourselves. making kitchen messes is a skill we’ve been honing for almost 12 years now. cleaning them up is not. but, as evidenced by today’s reality project  submission from tiffany, we are not alone.

tiffany writes:

what you see below is proof that we cook a lot but that we get in and out of the kitchen as quickly as humanly possible. that means that you’ll find food debris pretty much everywhere. we make the food and almost always neglect the clean up part. we can’t even be bothered to close the pantry doors!

tiffany continues:

this scene had about 36 hours more of a mess added to it before it got cleaned. that’s our reality. for us, there’s no time or energy left to clean after cooking. i imagine the kitchen cleaner at the front of the shot saying, “not dirty enough to challenge me. pile some more on before you call for my services!”

thank you , tiffany. and are those hubcaps above your stove? very cool.

the reality project  is off to a seamless start with pictures from carolyn. in addition to her responsibilities as a preschool teacher and a mom of two boys, carolyn makes and sells fabulous colorful aprons at the memphis farmers market, among other places. all this is to explain the scene you are about to behold:

carolyn writes, “this is the norm on any given day, and yes, we do eat dinner at that table every evening. all the crap gets moved around or just pushed to the end.”

the fun continues with this shot of the end table next to carolyn’s regular spot on the couch:

let’s play a game! can you spot the following?

• school stuff
• sewing stuff
• jewelry she’s taken off after a long day
• big cup of hot tea for the morning
• the “color swatch” that’s been on the wall for ages (color chosen and paint purchased ages ago, but it’s still not on the walls.)

carolyn, you win the prize for the most colorful take on chaos! and p.s. i will be contacting you about making me an apron!

name: Liz

age: 45

current city: Memphis

living situation: I share the home with a husband, a dog, and two sons: Gus, age seven, and Solly, age two-and-a-half (listed in order of arrival).

occupation: I’m a freelance food, family and travel writer. My regular gigs are blogging at GoWithFamily.com and writing a monthly family food column for Memphis Parent.

how do you structure your time and space? My office space is in a nook between the kitchen and the dining room, which is great when I’m writing about food or cooking from a recipe I’ve gotten off the web but lousy when my desk is messy — which is most of the time — and the kids start fooling around with my stuff. To structure my time, I’ve tried everything from hour-by-hour scheduling (I still have “shower” listed on my iCal daily plan) to caroming intuitively from one task to the next. Right now, what seems to be working is establishing a set of general priorities and making lists. On the top of my list these days is to write for at least a couple of hours and then spend some time managing and promoting my blog.

Then comes home stuff. I’m always motivated by food, much more than by housekeeping, so I usually write a plan for the week so there’s no last-minute shopping and brain-racking. We sit down most nights to a pretty good home-cooked family meal.

However, there’s a part of me that feels uneasy folding clothes or organizing our belongings. I actually think that’s kind of messed up. There’s a toxic stew of self-denial and feminist angst that makes me feel like ironing is retrogressive, time-wasting, and even frivolous, when it’s actually productive and meditative.

I have trouble taking time to meditate, even though I know it enriches me. The best compromise I’ve come up with is running without my iPod, which is pretty close to meditating. In fact, the best thing I can do for myself is simply to monotask — to do what I’m doing without distracting myself with podcasts or Facebook. Sometimes this includes music and other times it’s just quiet. Otherwise, my self-care consists of regular exercise and trying to connect with other people who are also trying to be present, patient, and useful.

Both of my kids go to a school that I love for its community and what my kids learn there–so much beyond the ABCs. After teaching for ten years, I began to question the way conventional schools — even the really good ones — function. I thought about homeschooling when the older one was little, but there’s a reason I have to work on being present, patient and useful. It doesn’t always come easily to me. So homeschooling was out. But I found a school that nurtures their inherent desire to cooperate, learn and grow.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? I’m tempted to say it’s the tired season right now. Having two young kids and being a freelancer is busy and exhausting in a way that’s very different from other tiring, busy times I’ve had in my life. It’s different from the laser-like focus on reading and writing of my grad school days, for example. It’s not all about me.

Taking things a day at a time is important to me whether I’m packing lunches and laundering diapers or trying to pull in a few more readers each day for my blog. But for the most part, my life is the result of my choices, which means that I’ve signed up for both the pluses and the minuses. I have to review that fact periodically so as to remember how lucky I am to have choices.

The highlights are pretty great. I get to do fun stuff with my family — eating, traveling, exploring, playing, reading — and then write about it. My kids try my patience, but that’s how they teach me patience. I get to grow up. And they are lovely, affectionate, original, and so utterly themselves.

-what season(s) preceded this one? There was a waiting season while the adoption of our younger son was processing. But of course waiting wasn’t all we did. You don’t live your life waiting, especially if you already have one bright shiny kid in your lap. So it was also a time of exploration. With just one kid, I was able to volunteer at Gus’s school, at the Farmers’ Market, and take on projects that seemed like they might contribute to the community, even if just in a small way. With two kids, I’ve had to shed most of the extracurricular stuff.

-what season(s) might your future hold? I have mixed feelings about entering the period when my boys will become more independent and I’ll move back into putting more of my energy into my writing, teaching, or community work. (I didn’t have the stamina to teach and raise kids, and am seriously amazed by people who do.) But a friend of mine was reflecting on how she keeps herself in balance, and she said that it was necessary for her to avoid hanging her identity on any one of her roles — mom, worker, wife. Because it’s almost guaranteed that things will change. Well, not even ‘almost,’ in the case of the mom role.

favorite family activities: I love exploring with my kids, biking, hiking, camping, trying new foods, and visiting state parks and weird places no one else ever visits. My husband and I have to compromise, because he’s not so crazy about camping and its discomforts, so we find budget-friendly ways of staying in hotels and cabins. At home we do a lot of lying around and reading.

favorite solo activities: lying around and reading, cooking, eating, knitting, killing plants, and traveling alone (one thing I miss about my single life)

When you travel alone you can stand in front of a picture in a museum for as long as you want, or read a book in a cafe if you like. It’s just a different kind of adventure.

source(s) of inspiration: I am inspired by my grandmother, who co-owned a travel agency in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She traveled by herself to Austria this summer, weeks before her 91st birthday, to go to a friend’s wedding.

Another source of inspiration is my dad, who reinvented himself as a poet and then started a post-retirement career publishing an Edible magazine. He’s got enormous integrity.

best MakeShift moment: The other day when the kids were extra-wild, I bought myself time to cook supper by letting them entwine all of our downstairs furniture in a giant yarn spiderweb. It’s taken me a while to recognize that messes like that don’t matter, especially when they allow me to get something done with the kids nearby.

check out liz’s blogs:

• http://gowithfamily.com
• http://peachesandbuttermilk.blogspot.com/

follow liz on twitter: @GoWithFamily

[if you or someone you know would make a good “mother of invention,” please check out the nomination process and questionnaire located on the sidebar to your right.]

if someone snuck into my house under the cover of darkness and absconded with my kitchen cd player, i would never cook again. as i see it, kitchen music has a twofold purpose:

1. to focus children’s boundless energy on hilarious and frenetic dance moves so that parents can get dinner on the table…

2. and to drown out endless screeching requests for dora gummies and other persistent high-pitched pleas.

without further introduction, i present to you dancing in the kitchen volume II. may your evenings be full of music and meatballs, wine and the weepies. bon appetit!

for those of you who missed dancing in the kitchen volume I last march, it is available here.

check out the MakeShift revolution’s dancing in the kitchen mix, volume 1, designed to make the pre-dinner scramble just a little less difficult. just add wine (for the adults) and bad dancing (for all) to your cooking/ordering out process, and you’ll be well on your way to putting a meal on the table with a smile!

by way of a testimonial, i tried this last night and both of my kids gave me five whole minutes of tail-feather-shaking peace. i was able to chop a red pepper AND an onion while my children swayed to the not-so-subliminal message from di anne price that spinach really does taste good if you allow it to “grow on you.” then, when the whining started (sparked by the bird’s komikaze pantry-emptying techniques), i simply turned up the volume and enjoyed a little old time bluegrass.

if you contributed suggestions for this masterpiece via facebook, thanks so much for your ideas. if your suggested song did not make the cd, that’s because

 a)      i have embarrassing memories of making out to it when I was in seventh grade

b)      my dad played it over and over again in the car on family vacations*

c)      an annoying boy I knew in high school ruined it for me with his constant disco moves

d)      your suggestion sent me down the i-tunes rabbit hole, and I emerged with a different but related song…or…

e)      i stayed up too late memorizing all the words to your suggested song at a slumber party that became really un-fun once I learned that window-unit air conditioner had leaked on my sleeping bag.

bring on the suggestions for volume 2!

*yes, i know i am perpetuating this cycle. when my children are 33 and wasting their time on itunes, they will probably avoid my carefully selected kitchen music!