A Note to Every Stay-at-Home Mom Who Feels 'Undone'

“Undone. That seems to be the mantra of my life right now.”

Lifestyle blogger Lauren Eberspacher of From Blacktop to Dirt Road recently revealed the not-so-fun part of her stay-at-home daily activities. Thoughts of her never-ending tasks, clean-ups that last all of five seconds and her seemingly ungrateful recipients endlessly plague the mom. Opening up about the whole ugly truth via Facebook, she explains how frustration follows her everywhere she goes in her home.

“It took me three hours to fold five loads of laundry today. Three hours… Once the madness of folding was over, I finished putting the last pile for the day back in its drawers. That’s when I looked over at the laundry basket in my daughter’s closet. It was already full again.”

"Well, that good feeling only lasted a couple of seconds,” she vents.

Things only escalated when she walked into the just-tidied living room and found the mess reappeared. Luckily, she didn’t have too much time to dwell, because she had other fires to put out.

“Just then I looked over at the kitchen floor. It was covered in crumbs and glitter. I saw the baby picking up tiny pieces and putting them in his mouth. I quickly picked him up, scooped out whatever it was that was in his mouth and got to sweeping,” she says.

The crumbs, however, would make a quick comeback.

“As I was emptying the dustpan into the trash, my 3-year-old walked up behind me and asked if I could read her a book…as she bit into a graham cracker and crumbs scattered onto the floor.”

It’s in moments like these when Eberspacher can’t help but feel under-appreciated by the people she loves most.

“Sometimes, I wonder: Does anyone even really notice what I do? Do they see my efforts? Do they recognize all the times I’m on the floor scrubbing baby puke out of the carpet, picking up the blocks, folding the socks or straightening up the shoes?”

These are dark feelings to cope with, and sometimes they hit pretty hard.

“The one thing that seems to silently come undone the easiest is my heart. Some days my work for my family seems mundane and insignificant,” the mom admits. “As much as I try, I don’t always serve the people in my house with gladness.”

To cope with the madness, the blogger reminds herself this phase of life isn’t permanent. “This season of my housework constantly being undone is temporary,” she says. “So keep on doing all the things you do, mama friend. And when you get overwhelmed when you see your work getting undone, take a deep breath, grab a thin mint from the freezer and do it all again.

Most of the time, people don’t realize what it’s really like to be a stay-at-home mom, which is why notes like Eberspacher’s are so important. Lots of parents who stay home with the kids grapple with different emotions. If you’re one of the many, learn about a few tricks to help stay happy.