Oh, My Achin' Back!

I've undertaken a HUGE project, on the magnitude of scaling Mt. Everest, I'd say. I waded into it fully aware of the horrors, but I knew it had to be done.

I started cleaning the Middle Child's room.

Pity me, for I've taken on the task of Sisyphus. If you haven't seen her room let me enlighten you. It's like a "before" shot on Clean House or one of the other organizing shows, you know, the kind that makes you go "how could they LIVE like that?" See, DH and I have this consistency problem. We make proclamations like "we're going to have clean up time EVERY DAY", and that lasts all of about, oh, two days before we throw up our hands in despair. I used to be better about going in and cleaning up every now and again since I know the job can get overwhelming and the mess isn't totally her fault. The Youngest gets in there and dumps things, and right after the last cleaning a couple of years ago she had a friend over who also dumped things everywhere and left them. (See, I told you it's been a while.) (And that friend doesn't come over anymore; whew.)

It's just such a nightmare of a job because children's toys have 42 million parts... EACH. Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony and the ever popular Barbie with about a gazillion shoes and other small accessories and Legos and American Girl and art supplies and books, and, and, and... it all has to be sorted. Every little teeny tiny piece has to be sorted into the appropriate container, which makes me ask myself why? Why do we have separate containers for all of these things? Why not take DH's suggestion and throw it all in one big bin? Well, we don't have one big bin big enough for everything, unfortunately, or I'm totally there. So we sort and sort, and now my back is killing me from sitting on her bedroom floor sorting. I'm happy we got to the point where we can sit on her floor, though, because it wasn't possible before I went in yesterday!

Then there's the issue of purging. All the organizing shows say when it gets that bad (actually, to keep it from getting that bad) you should purge. The Middle Child doesn't like that theory. She can not let go of ANYTHING. If she's made the least little bit of a mark on a piece of paper it all of a sudden becomes "SPECIAL" and she can't let it go. It's major trauma to throw out anything for her! I wouldn't let her in the room with me for the first few hours, in fact I snuck in there when she was busy in another part of the house, because I didn't want to fight with her about what I was getting rid of. She's got baby toys in there she won't let go, for goodness' sake. I filled two garbage bags and got them out to the trash can before she realized what I was doing. (And our Goodwill pile has grown larger as well.)

Well, to give her a little credit, she is somewhat better about letting things go, I've noticed. She actually threw a few things away herself, so I'm quite proud of her progress.

Sigh... but this isn't helping me finish. Back to it!