I have four kids—three of them are triplets—and I still want a clean house. Hey, my mom had one.

My mother is, well, a neat freak. Growing up, my three brothers and I never saw her leave the house until every sock and shirt, every crumpled paper and Cap’n Crunch crumb was off the floor and in its place. You’d think that with four kids she might have occasionally relaxed her standards, but no—chaos was not to be had in our house. She simply would not come home to anything less than pristine. Nary a stray toy nor unwashed cup to be found—ever. The four of us often waited in the van in the mornings as she straightened crooked picture frames and swept the floor while backing out the door.

I lay no claim to having inherited her tidiness. But when I became a mom, I at least made attempts at household order. That is, until our triplet girls were born, joining their 2-year-old sister. That’s right, four daughters—and one crazy house.

I returned to work, as an instructor at Purdue University, when the triplets were 18 months. That’s when my morning dread took hold. The task of getting all five of us dressed, fed and loaded into the van was nightmarish. Just matching five pairs of socks and five pairs of shoes was a bad dream in itself. Still under the grip of my mom’s example, I’d try to get things off the floor before we left, or at least get the dirty dishes off the table. But it was never quite what mom would have done. It nagged at me. I was not neat.

Shortly after the triplets turned 2, I had a turning point. It was the morning I opened their door to find that emily and Lucy had dumped the entire contents of every drawer of their very large dresser onto Sarah’s bed—with the sleeping Sarah still in it. She was utterly buried under heaps of shirts, socks, pj’s and pants. oh yes, the two had also taken their own mattresses off their beds and leaned them up against the bed frames to fashion homemade slides. there were giggles galore. I had a choice. I could: 1. Crumple up and cry. 2. Frantically try to make order of the mess. 3. Just grab the girls and go. The winner: No. 3. That’s when I shut the door on the chaos, realizing that if I never let myself leave the house in disorder, we’d all probably become hermits.

And that’s where I am today. though I still need to remind myself that just getting out of the house in the morning is a victory. Sorry, mom, I won’t be walking into a home where every toy is in its place and every countertop sparkles. But I do get the kids to day care safe and sound, and I get to work unscathed. And at the end of the day, we walk into a home where four little girls can grow, explore their world and watch and learn as their mom picks her battles when it comes to life’s challenges. Hmmm, pretty neat.