Supermomitis

The past couple weeks I’ve really struggled with a case of supermomitis. You know what I mean, right? The feeling like I have to be an amazing mom who does arts and crafts with my daughter, doesn’t let her watch too much tv, teaches her the alphabet and her numbers, cooks all our meals, does laundry, doesn’t leave clean laundry on the couch for more than a day waiting to be folded, ensures everything in the house is in its rightful place, ensures everything in the house even has a rightful place, does the dishes, plays with the dog, arranges play dates, keeps up with the grocery shopping, takes a shower, spends quality time with her husband, gets birthday cards and mother’s day cards in the mail on time, speaks to her friends and maybe, just maybe has a spare minute or two to read a book or write a blog. And I just can’t do it all. If I stay on top of keeping up with the house, then I do that at the expense of my daughter (either giving her my undivided attention or letting her watch TV). The advice or comments I have recently received have come from people who do not have kids or do not have toddlers. I mean, really, when their kids were little could they keep an immaculate house?

The truth is, I want my house to be a little more orderly. I’m already on a rampage to clean stuff out (whenever I can find some spare time…) and make better use of our space. But I’m trying to figure out how much of my stress is due to this mythological supermom and how much of it I can actually do something about.

So I’m looking for comments here. What are your thoughts or advice? How do you maintain an orderly house? How do you combat the idea of the supermom (or do you even ever struggle with it?)?