Whelp, the big, dramatic, sexy, six-month make-over of The Ugly House is still a year and a half in progress, and so far, it feels like all we’ve done is remove a hairy mole when we’ve still got an entire facelift, hairstyling, butt-firming, and Paula Abdul teeth whitening to do.  Figuratively speaking.  I honestly don’t know how some of those DIY/Home bloggers (which I’m not) turn their houses around so quickly, but it quite disgusts me.  And it doesn’t help that I live with a messy (though he makes up for it in good looks) husband, two college boys, and two small girls who could find a way to make a bigger mess out of a hurricane-ravished site.  At least our two international students aren’t messy (though I’m possibly in denial because I haven’t stepped foot in their bathroom all week).  I just keep reminding myself that the extra income from housing them, as well as their cute faces, make it worth it.  The cute faces of my girls though, are starting to wear thin.

After the chaos of Christmas and me being sick for over a week, this is what our house looked (okay, still looks) like:

Wop-wop-wop.  How does anyone get any major projects done (like building an arched wall to cover the exposed beams in our dining room, or DIY-ing some concrete countertops, etc.) in the midst of THIS?  I feel like I’m constantly falling behind – constantly picking up after children, constantly fighting a mountain of laundry, constantly having to rearrange rooms to accommodate a new student, constantly hanging up my husband’s jacket from off the dining room table….the list goes on.

If it just felt like normal chores – like cleaning a bathroom, or mopping the floors – it would be one thing.  Those things can go at least a week without HAVING to be done again.  It’s the dailiness of the massive messes that gets to me; feeling like there’s always a pile of SOMETHING that needs to be faced down.  And those piles are always telling me in such a snarky way, “You can’t even manage to face me, how do you think you’re ever gonna get another real house project done?”  It’s like trying to offer a complete make-over to a bitter, ungrateful hag.  If only my house knew what I was trying to do for it – give her a lighter feel, an updated look, a new self-esteem to compete with all the younger, thinner houses out in the suburbs.  But no, every time I try to detox my house and get it on a healthy diet of regular sweeping, bathroom cleaning and dish-scrubbing, I turn around to find my house gorging on piles of junk.

But no more!  I am NOT going to let those piles intimidate me anymore.  I’m goin’ Jillian Michaels all UP in their bidness.  Either the piles go, or the piles go ignored and I start on my big projects anyway.  We’ll turn this ungrateful hag of a house into a charming Taylor Swift of a house whatever it takes.

Please tell me there are others of you out there with rebellious houses that refuse to clean up after themselves and put on a nice smile for company?  Lie to me if you have to, but please tell me, that in spite of all the amazing blogs I see each week where they’ve renovated an entire kitchen in 4.5 minutes, or built a beautiful wrap-around deck with paperclips and recycled cardboard while blindfolded, that I am not too painfully slow and a total failure at keeping house?  I can’t let this Ugly House get to me.