The Contentment of Chaos

• Floss
• 1
• on Jan 11, 2023

Chaos is a word used often in my house. Order? Not so much. I often wish I was more organised, more ordered, more able to embrace routine but the truth is that wouldn’t suit our lifestyle at all. 

Mr F works in hospitality management. His current position is training for the day he can finally run his own store, which we should see happen within the next 1-2 years. His hours are not always predictable and they aren’t regular from one week to the next. Then on Wednesday I go in for an induction to start with the same company in the kitchen, so this is our life, the food industry is what we know and love so for a long time to come our home life will somewhat be dictated by feeding other people. 

Sometimes he arrives home just as Tiny Human is settling down for bed. Our flat is too small to hide the fact he’s home, so we just roll with it, he has some time with Daddy then we tackle sleep. Other days he’s home in the morning, on the worst days he’s gone all day. Again we don’t always know this in advance but if someone calls in sick and he’s needed to keep the shift running smoothly then he stays. You can’t be upset by it, or feel thrown off because he didn’t arrive when you were expecting. My dinner times, bedtimes and day off plans are always flexible. 

Even when I seem like a highly organised person, I’m not. During my most successful year of blogging back on FlossDoesLife I blogged every single day. Sometimes more than once a day. While that did take some organising, I used a diary successfully for the first time ever, it was actually order born of chaos. I felt like the writing cliche, surviving on caffeine and very little sleep. 

Luckily the chaos doesn’t seem to bother my anxiety, which might be strange. What stresses me out more is trying to force order into our lives when it just doesn’t fit. That doesn’t give me anxiety. If I had a routine that I absolutely had to stick to, and things happened to derail that, I’d feel so panicked. Having everything I had planned be pushed back because of one tiny change, that was perhaps out of my control, would absolutely ruin my day. Haphazard unplanned, or rather, loosely planned chaos that does bother me one bit. 

The only area of life where chaos is not tolerated and it has already been mentioned, is work. Chaos in the kitchen is not productive. In fact, chaos anywhere in the restaurant, front or back is going to lead to a nightmare of a shift. Funnily enough Mr F and I are both organised workers, him more so than me, hence why he’s a manager and I’m not. Maybe that’s why at home we’re happy to just let the chaos unfold. 

Which happens a lot with two children in the house. I have a toddler that I know 100% I grew, and he’s definitely a mini version of his dad, but I’m not convinced he isn’t actually the spawn of some kind of chaos demon. He loves it, it’s like he was born to burn the world down, it’s both terrifying and fascinating watching him crash about and leave destruction in his wake. 

Our house is evidence of our chaotic life. Partly due to space I think. I know Mr F would love us to be more minimalist and not quite as messy, but currently we have to cope with clean but cluttered because we just need more space generally. Moving for more space is pointless though because our rent is low and our fixed rate energy is reasonable, moving now would increase our outgoing by double (at least) I suspect. Add in that housing eventually comes with Mr F’s job and staying out and making peace with the chaos is the best decision for now. 

That is perhaps optimistic of me though, I suspect regardless of space, time or fabulous inventions we will always be a bit chaotic. We’re very happy though so the chaos is clearly working for us, maybe we’re just a whole house full of chaos demons, reveling in destroying the order wherever we go!