The mess I make

First, a warning. This post lacks wisdom and is quite literally about the mess I make. I'm working on honesty here, and honestly, my house is a mess. The truth is I don't usually care.
Except that two things happened. One, someone came over (that never happens).  Two, I've been reading more blogs and find that- astonishingly- people frequently post pics of their homes.  From the inside.
And they look like pictures in a magazine.
Who lives like that?

Apparently lots of people.
So between having the inside of my home accidentally observed, and a nagging case of blog pic envy,  I was moved to clean. I got as far as my bedroom closet. Here it is after I'd been working on it for 3 hours.

I thought I'd clean the other rooms too, but I only got as far as picture taking.  I'm posting the pics here in hopes that I'll be shamed into actual cleaning, though I suspect my lack of housekeeping skills may win out .
 
The chalkboard-painted area in my kitchen says "Happy Birthday Mommy". My birthday was in June. The upper cabinets are missing the hardware because I took it off to prime and paint... 9 years ago. The colorful tile backsplash is not tile, it's paint.  A "temporary" fix for the ugly white paperboard that was there when we bought the house.

Below is the dining room. The piano is no longer in use. I was planning on having a "piano-on-the-lawn-sledgehammer-demolition-day" until someone warned me that the strings could snap and take out an eye. Too bad; I think it would have been a fun time.

Below is the living room, which we don't actually use because, well, because it's a mess. We hang out downstairs in the family room, which is a bigger, more comfortable mess, but not pictured here.

  
I should admit that I haven't actually cleaned anything besides daily dishes since the last of the kids left in August. I think in spite of the abundance of kid clutter the house was actually neater when they were all here, and smaller. These days I find I'm too busy running, hiking, reading, thinking, sewing, painting or gluing something to worry about cleaning the house. And since there's no one here but Jim and me to see it...

And anyway February is such a good month for cleaning, why waste a nice October?


P.S. If you are one of the house-beautiful people, and appalled, I apologize for the distress my pics must have caused.  On the other hand, if you are one of the house-messy people, please let me know.  I fear I am alone.