By Amy Keyes 
One of my favorite quotes says, “The opposite of a hot mess is cold, predictable, and tidy. That’s not where your magic lives. Be brave and embrace the mess.” I’m not sure who said it, but it lives proudly on my favorite wine glass, reminding me I’m not alone in all my feelings of hot messiness.
Don’t get me wrong. I have the deepest admiration and respect for the non-hot-messers, but I definitely need all the validation I can get for where I live. Our entryway is brimming over with multiple pairs of teenage shoes that can’t ever seem to find their way to the shoe rack. Piles of laundry dance from one side of the coffee table to the other, never seeming to make it back into those bedrooms. Stacks of homework line any loose corner they can be tucked under, and I leave them in fear of tossing something they have worked so hard on and still might need.
So even though this clutter feels like it might literally swallow me whole, this year, I’ve committed myself to defending it. All the stuff that has driven me crazy for years but now seems to be making me feel differently, knowing that its time in our home is finite.
I know it sounds cliche—and maybe even insane—but I’m trying so hard this year to embrace the messiness in a way I never have, especially because I have a senior, and I know the end of his time under our roof as we know it is just a few seasons away. And our younger one is not too far behind.
Pretty soon all these things will be gone. All the shoes I trip over will be passed on. And the memories that sit in my heart of years of standing on the sidelines at cross country and track meets, football and basketball games, and ski races will be laced up on someone else’s feet.
All the clothes will be boxed up and packed away or brought to the next destination in my boys’ journeys of life. The piles of laundry will belong solely to just my husband and me once again.
All the papers will be placed in binders to dig out someday from our basement when we are begging our kids to take the pieces of their childhood with them into their own futures.
The thought of predictable and tidy is honestly something that, at this juncture in my life, is so much harder to bear than the hot mess I live in now. It is a reminder that soon, the noise will become silence. The clutter will give way to an emptiness that will crack my heart open in a way I can’t even begin to imagine.
So, I’ve committed to defending the clutter. I have made a solemn promise to myself. A vow to not let the clutter cloud these final moments of life as a family of four under one roof the way we know it.
I vow to refrain from cursing every time I trip over a shoe at the front door. To breathe in the moment every time I need to refold the sweatshirt that has been sitting on the coffee table for a week. To look at each piece of paper as I pick it up and place it into that binder that will sit in my basement for years to come. I will be brave and embrace the mess. And I will really, truly find the magic in it.
by Anneliese Lawton 
