Mum's reaction was a wake-up call: 'How in the world did this happen?'
We have an endless list of to-do's we sift through during the day.
We normally try our hardest to get them done when the kids are in school, however during the holidays it's hard to find time for everything.
With the kids roaming around the house or spontaneous trips to the park, we scramble around like crazy trying to do it all.
But when one mum noticed herself becoming stuck on her to-do list, she realised there was something that should have been before her list.
Writing for Her View From Home, mum-of-three, Lauren Eberspacher, was busy hoovering the floor while the lunch was cooking on the stove, but as she was cleaning her two daughters decided to go play in their bedroom.
As they began walking down the hallway, the busy mum nabbed a few more minutes to get a few extra bits ticked off her list, heading to the laundry room to fold towels.
"My oldest called out to me to come and help her with something in her room. 'I’ll be there in just a minute!' I hollered back to her, as I kept folding. 'I’ll go as soon as I finish folding these towels,' I told myself."
"Once done folding, I brought a few of the clean hand towels into our bathroom and noticed that the bathroom needed a quick pick up. As I started tidying, my daughter called for me again. 'Mom, are you coming? I really need you!' 'Yes, honey, just give Mommy one more minute. I’ve got to get this done'."
Allowing for a few more minutes to pass while she checked on lunch, finally Lauren began making her way down the hallway to her daughter.
But she had a thought on the way down, one she's not proud of, sharing: "I wonder what it is she needs my help with now. I wish she could just start to do some stuff on her own so I could get a little more done around here."
When Lauren got to the bedroom her eldest daughter was on the ground with a towel in hand trying to clean a mess on the floor, afraid she would be in trouble.
"She quickly stood up and hid a towel behind her back, 'I’m sorry, Mommy', she said as the tears began to well up in her eyes."
Mum exclaimed: "How in the world did this happen?"
The youngster explained that she had strawberries stuck in her teeth and wanted to clean them, which is why she had initially called her mum for help, but Mum was too busy.
"My heart sank. I knelt down and hugged her. 'You’re right, honey. Mommy was too busy. But I shouldn’t have been. I’m the one who is sorry'. We stood there and hugged a little while longer. 'Come on, let’s clean this up together',”Lauren told her toddler.
So while the pair sat on the floor, scrubbing away the mess that had gathered, Lauren was a million miles away: "She at the floor, but me, I was scrubbing away at my busy mama heart."
"And I knew in that moment that there was a lot that needed to be cleaned out."
Being the keeper of the house, it's hard to balance what is essential and what's not at times; you don't want to be a failure yet sometimes the most important part of the home is the family within it.
"It’s a fine line between scratching things off our to-do list and constantly being available when the little people need us. I mean, we all have to have clean underwear, right?"
"But the thing that my daughter taught me on the day of the blue toothpaste is to be available as mummy first and list scratcher second."
"Because the last thing that I want my kids to call me is 'too busy'."
It's easy to get caught up in the everyday, but it's the little things that bring us back around.