flowmom | shifting from devastated to rebuilding

[flowmom]

In your case, what if your home represents stress, angst, hardships...

I'm sure it does.

So maybe you can work with that somehow...arrange other meetings on some days to outside places? Excursions?

No sure how I can pull that off as we aren't doing any activities as a family. I guess I could try to have him pick up the kids in places other than our home, but that's tricky as he often comes first thing in the morning...

I don't know...or (and maybe you already did this) totally change the way your home looks. Refresh it and redecorate, declutter. HAHAHA I realize this is a tall order when you are a SAHM! How can you do that without time on your hands? Or something simple like adding plants and putting clutter in the closet temporarily...

We live in an apartment so space has always been an issue and at some point the clutter got really out of control (largely due to H's junk, business inventory, and general slobbishness). Our children are unbelievable mess makers and they are home more than most children, and because of S's special needs, it's much harder to do housework when he is awake. Before H moved out I often did 2+ hours of housework after the kids went to bed (not including cooking, deep cleaning, etc., just the basic daily stuff). Of course I have a LOT less housework to do since H moved out.

For the past two years I've been working on decluttering and organizing. On one hand, we've all been stressed by the mess and clutter including H. I've made huge strides in maintaining our home in the last year and it's gotten so much better. But H has actually fought me on making any improvements to our home the whole way through (I haven't done any renovations, just a bit of painting and renting a storage locker).

Now things don't feel great in the apartment because H is removing stuff and furniture and I've haven't had the time/heart to reorganize everything. I'm pretty sensitive to my environment so I know I have to deal with this.