3 Days and One Aching Back

3 days; it took 3 days to clean my son's room, but it's done. For the moment, anyway. My children are slobs. (They get it from their dad, although I'm obligated to mention that he did fold at least 5 baskets of laundry over the weekend. And worked on the kitchen. I love that man.) They all 3 live in absolute pigsties and seem to like it that way and yes, I realize I'm an enabler because I don't have the energy to keep after them to clean everything up on a regular basis. I know there are some moms who are good about daily clean ups and so forth but I'm not one of them so the messes get out of hand and they get overwhelmed, then forget it. Part of the problem is an excess of toys, especially the toys with a zillion small parts, which are a nightmare to clean up. Most of the time I was working in his room was spent sorting. There's just no other realistic way to do it, though. He has a huge toy box but it doesn't hold everything, and even if it did when it's all piled together he can't play with, say, Legos because he can't find enough of them to make anything.

I actually took a garden rake in there at one point to gather everything into one pile to make it easier to sit in one spot and sort. I'm happy I was able to get things organized, though. I took away a whole container full of Little People toys, much to the dismay of both The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, and The Middle Child. They don't play with them anymore, which I know because most of them were among the only toys still put away, and I'll use them as a bargaining chip. (They can have them back if they keep their rooms clean for x amount of time. They'll forget about them then I can ship them off to Goodwill in a couple of months.) That container is now holding a Geo Trax set. Some of his containers were broken and several new toys didn't even have a place to go to begin with so I got that all straightened out. Luckily there were some spare containers which I've now put to good use and everything has a place to go. At final count, I got rid of about 6 bags of trash and two contractor sized trash bags to go to Goodwill, and probably another 3 or 4 loads of laundry from all the dirty clothes he had laying around his room. All in all, I'm happy it's done even though I know it won't last.

I went into The Middle Child's room and did the same thing a month or so ago, only I didn't finish up and left one teeny tiny little pile of toys to sort in the middle of the floor, one innocent little almost done baby pile I was sure The Middle Child could handle, and the next time I looked in her room it was as if I hadn't touched it. I think she dumped almost every single toy container out again; ARGH!!!

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!