Confessions of a Stay at Home Mom

So here it is. My messy home. I've decided that there is no sense in pretending that I ACTUALLY keep a tidy home. Now, that having been confessed there is a difference between tidiness and cleanliness. There are three things that are required for cleanliness in my house:
1) The bathroom scrubbed top to bottom 1-2 times per week
2) Sweeping and vacuuming the floors (a constant battle but necessary with a crawling baby running wild in the house)
3) Laundry. Three children, a mechanic for a husband and me- well, I have to pick up the messy children, so my clothes are just as interesting as the children's.
Okay, so really there are four requirements:
4) Dishes.
Some of you may have read my status on facebook a few days ago about my frustration with dishes. I'm the kind of woman that likes to do a job until it's done and then I enjoy revelling in my accomplishment. With dishes, however, they are just never done. Many have suggested that the same is true for laundry, but I think it is a little different. Anyway, dishes, obviously is my struggle. Even when I try to wash a dish immediately after it's used usually situations arise that make it impossible for me to turn the water on, get the rag sudsy and scrub the dish. And most often it's not just one but four or five plates, cups, forks and the dish we cooked with. That makes as many as 16+ dishes! So, I'm letting you in on my "dirty" little secret with a bit of ulterior motive. First, so I can learn about what some of your organizing/cleaning/tidying systems are. What is your motivation? Do you clean throughout the day or first thing in the morning? Do you wait until kids are asleep to begin attacking the messes made throughout the day? Second, maybe this will help alleviate some of the pressure women in our society (intentionally or not) place on each other to keep perfect homes with everything in its place. How tidy (or not) our homes are is NOT, in my opinion, a reflection of who we are or how good of a mother we are. FYI: my dishes get stacked up when we're on our fourth day in a row of playing in the backyard together from sun-up to sundown; when I'm making myself available for my children to facilitate games, crafts, snacks, breakfast, lunch, lemonade stands, stroller walks, bike rides, trips to the library or the playground, filling the swimming pool with water from the hose, making the hose into a sprinkler with my thumb over the hole because we don't actually have a sprinkler!) pushing everyone on the swings (almost always 3 kids simultaneously) building sand dunes in the sandbox, discovering bugs, playing "RED LIGHT! GREEN LIGHT," or reading books together on a rainy afternoon. I'm not a maid I'm a mother. Some day my kitchen counters will be clutter free, the dishes always clean, toys and books always in their place. But for now, I'm relaxing my standards and remembering that when my children have all grown they won't write in a Mother's Day card, "Thanks, Mom, for keeping a clean house and always doing the dishes. You're the best!"