A HappiMess Story

Kids are messy. From the time they are born and you realize they go through more diapers in a day than you thought they’d go through in a week, they are messy. Then, for the next few years, they seem to get messier as time goes on. They also seem to enjoy messes even more. I always got a kick out of the first few months of feeding my kids baby food. They’d giggle and wave the spoon around. The whole kitchen would be covered in smashed peas and I doubted they actually ate anything. I’d find myself laughing along with them as my kitchen got messier and stickier. Before kids, I would have never laughed at someone throwing pureed foods around the kitchen. The more I see my kids truly happy in messy situations, the more I’ve learned to embrace a HappiMess.

Since the baby food days, we’ve progressed to messy nights of ice cream sundaes, finger painting, mud puddles and our favorite rainy day activity: painting the shower walls with colored yogurt. In these moments, it’s easier to embrace a HappiMess, because the kids are having so much fun. For me, the harder party to embrace, in this messy job of parenting, has been the every day messes. By 7am every morning, our kitchen looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a week and the toys have already migrated across the house. By mid day, the mess has spread: now in addition to toys everywhere, things like the table and chairs start to feel a little sticky. By the time the kids go to bed: total disaster.

I used to run around after them all day long, cleaning and wiping. They’d run out of the kitchen and I’d stay behind cleaning. They’d call me to play but I couldn’t leave a room before it looked clean. I started to find I was spending my day cleaning and yelling about messes. Over the past 2 years, I’ve given that up. I’ve embraced that I have little children and making messes is one of the things they do best. They are happy in our house, they like to play and have me join in on the fun. Years from now, when they are all out of the house, I’ll have plenty of time to clean. These days, from about 6am to 7pm the mess grows. Then they go to bed, I clean up and relax. If you stop by for a visit any hour before 7pm, expect a mess, but kids live here and we’re having fun. We color, paint, bake and spend more time playing with toys than cleaning them. That’s our #HappiMess story.

We’ve enjoyed working with Delta Faucet over the past few months. They’ve helped remind me to embrace a HappiMess. It’s been fun to keep up with the #HappiMess hashtag on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and see just how messy other people are getting too. From kids to adults, it’s always fun to see a great, messy picture!

On our messiest days, the The Delta 2.0 Touch faucet really does help with clean up: the kids are now tall enough to help clean, because they can just tap the faucet on. When their hands are covered in ice cream, mud and paint, they don’t have to actually grab the faucet handle to turn on the water. It helps me when I am covered in one of their messes – I can just tap the faucet on to wash my hands.

Another new technology from Delta Faucet is the Delta Temp 2 O. This new product comes as a shower head, hand shower or tub shower and features a digital temperature display with LED color indicators to signal different water temperature ranges. This new technology provides convenience and peace of mind knowing the temperature of the water flowing from their shower or bathtub spout before getting in or putting their children in. This is another way to relax and clean up easily after a fun day full of #HappiMess!

“Why do people treat mess like it’s a bad thing? It’s actually the evidence of a life well lived. When you’re out there making, creating, doing and playing, embrace your #HappiMess and let Delta kitchen and bath innovations help clean up so you can do it all again tomorrow.”