If you are a stay-at-home mom you will understand what I mean when I say that during the summer there is always more work to do than usual.  The kids are home so there are more crumbs to clean up off the floor, more laundry to do, arts and craft supplies are all over the house, toys in every room, dishes piling up in the sink, and bathing suits and towels everywhere!  Hey, Mom needs a break too.  Why does everyone else get a holiday, and mom doesn’t?  

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My husband and two high school daughters leave very early in the morning for work and school so I tend to make their lunches the night before and that way they can just pull them out of the fridge in the morning, and off they go.  But during the summer all six of us wake up at different times so there are always cereal bowls and toast crumbs all over the kitchen table and in the sink.  My husband and I get up first, so we will usually be done our breakfast by the time our four kids come down to eat.  By the time everyone is done eating and I have done all the breakfast dishes, it is almost time to get lunch started. 

 Of course no one wants a plain, easy to prepare sandwich because that is what they have been eating for most of the year at work and school.  So, naturally that means mom has to cook.  Which means, pots, pans and a stove to clean up afterwards.  Not to mention the fact that now I have to come up with two main meal ideas for one day!  I have a lot of ideas for meals because I enjoy cooking (most of the time) but sometimes it can be very hard when you have picky eaters.  It actually feels like I have to come up with a lot more than two main meals in a day during the summer because there is always someone who doesn’t like one or two of the ingredients so I will have to make something totally different for that person.  Also, I don’t eat meat and my family does, so sometimes I even forget to make something for myself because I am so concerned about making food for everyone else.  You can see some of the recipes I’ve come up with on my blog, Veg on the Web.

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I usually try to have pasta a few times a week because it is fairly easy to prepare and there are a million different variations.  But if we have pasta at lunch-time, I can’t have it again for dinner.  Also it’s so hot and I really don’t want to turn the oven on.  Sometimes my husband will barbecue for us so that gives me a break, or does it?  I still have to make the pasta salad or potato salad, prepare all the veggies, cut up the watermelon, make a tossed salad, and then clean up the mess after everyone is done eating.

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Cooking more meals isn’t the only extra job during the summer.  With so many extra foods being prepared and eaten, there is a lot more mess on the counter, table, and floors to tidy up.  I have a white tile floor in my kitchen (what a mistake that was) and you can see every spill very clearly.  Sometimes you can find all the colours of the rainbow on my floor because of the orange juice, red fuit punch, purple pop, not to mention the green grass smudges and just plain brown dirt.  Who ever invented white tiles anyway?  They obviously didn’t have kids, or if they did they must have had a maid to help clean up.

I’ve written an article about my laundry situation before, and in the article I was wishing for summer so that there would be less clothes to wash.  Well, I was wrong – there isn’t less laundry at all.  The clothing is just smaller because the shirts have short sleeves instead of long, and the kids wear shorts and bathing suits instead of long pants, but there is still a TON of laundry to do and the floor sure needs a lot of attention from all the grass and sand that is tracked indoors.

At the beginning of summer I am always glad to have my kids home with me and when my husband takes his holidays it is great to see him everyday and not just at suppertime, but by the time September rolls around, I am so worn out that I’m glad summer is over and everything can get back to normal.