Household Woes

On any given day, I always say to myself that I needed at least a week or two to get the things in order and put everything randomly lying around in their proper places. I've been a mother and wife for almost ten years now and still finds it hard to keep the house fully in order. It is almost Christmas and I haven't accomplish anything yet. The fact is, I recognized that need over four months ago, but despite my best intentons, it still hasn't happened for me.
Through the years though and with the addition of each babies in my family, I have contented and busied myself with tinkering the rooms in the house. As the family grows, much more things are added inside the house which includes additional toys, clothes, shoes, cabinets, beds, storybooks, photo albums, bags, baby bottles, and many others. I have a big family which means big responsibility. And as a mother and wife, it is my job to run the household and turn our house into a neat and cheerful home. Everyday is a challenge for me. In our home, you will find scratches on the floor and colorful marks on the walls in almost every room. Those are marks made by my kids while they are playing. It doesn't mind me actually because it's their joy in playing that matters to me the most.
Going through our house, I haven't made any progress in our clean and dirty kitchen. I have been planning to arrange all the kitchen utensils and to organize them in neat little piles and clusters but haven't got the time to do so. The kitchen cabinets, refrigerator and oven needs some cleaning up also! My room looks like a kiddie playroom. Balloons and balls of different shapes and colors were all scattered on the floor. Stuff toys and transformers toys were seen in every corner of my room. You can see all signs of my children almost everywhere in my big bedroom even inside my walk-in closet. I don't know how to fix all these but somehow it gives me joy everytime I see my children's toys scattered all over since it greatly reminds me of them every minute of the day. My desk, which is positioned at the corner in our room, is piled up with different stuffs from my paperworks to my kids' drawings and many others. I always try to clean and organize the mounds that seem to naturally pile up in satellites. But despite my best efforts, the cycle just goes on and on, and on.
I need to buy curtains and some more furnitures for my living room and den. I also haven't set up my Christmas village! Our Meralco bill is getting more exorbitant by the month, and I have made it my personal mission to lower it as much as I possibly can. But between being a mother and a wife, with a household to run, and work commitments to fulfill, and my children's activities, where do I even begin?
Neatness is a sneaky thing, especially for a housewife. She makes one area of the house as neat and as pretty as can be and before she even realizes it she is working on making the rest of the house the same way too. This is a challenge for me now. The challenge that lies in achieving neatness, beauty, and tangible order at the least cost possible. Wise choice always have to be made.