Mess, mess, mess.....

I find myself more often than not in a MESS!!! My house is a mess, my car is a mess, my dirty clothes and my clean clothes are a mess, I have not even made it to the shower today, therefore I am a mess! My really neat, organized friends tell me that it is because at our house everything does not have a place and in order to clean things up, everything must have a place.

I know this to be true because I cleaned out Graham's room not too long ago and now everything (and I do mean everything) he owns has its own little nook or cranny. It takes him about five minutes to clean his room! It is awesome. It is the absolute ONLY bright spot in my entire house. The one and only room where I know that no matter how bad it looks at any given moment, it can be clean as a whistle in 2-3 minutes.

Shall I tell you why Graham's room is so easy to clean? Maybe you will see my dilemma. Graham can, in fact, clean his room, himself in less than 200 seconds because....are you ready for this.....drum roll.......


He got rid of all of his stuff!!!

Yes, I am quite serious. Graham, for those of you who do not know him, only likes two things in this life - as far as toys go. Guns (and other weapons) and sports equipment (and other outside toys like scooters). As you can imagine, most of these things belong in the garage. The toy guns have a drawer in his room, his dress up clothes (and his sister's) have a chest in his room, and he has a large basket of plastic "people" - knights, star wars figures, etc... He also owns a large wooden castle that I found at a garage sale, in which he occasionally plays with the aforementioned knights. There is absolutely no reason for Graham to own anything else as he would never touch it and his friends would come over and dump it all into the floor, thereby leaving me to have to clean it up. So, we got rid of it all. It has been wonderful, amazing, beyond words. I want to do this to the rest of my house.

But, alas, the hundreds and hundreds of books we own can not simply be thrown away. No, we actually read them and school with them, and use them for research projects. The weekly World magazine that comes into our home on a regular basis is actually picked apart for news and other world information and if I throw one away, inevitably someone is writing a paper and yells, "Hey, where is that World magazine with Obama on the front?" Hence the fact that they lay around the house like so many pages of trash. Until I throw one away that is.

I've thought of throwing away our clothes, but, well, there are laws about that.

The other things that seem to frequently be seen laying out of place around our house are various dishes - especially glasses (at least four or five per day per child) and spoons.

Spoons, you may ask? Ask away, I don't know either!

Now, before you all comment and tell me that my children have a discipline problem, don't worry, I am well aware of the fact. Their mother also has a discipline problem. Some days I just can't bring myself to tackle the mess that has piled up. Some days I feel sincerely accomplished if I bathe and feed my children a couple of times! The other problem is that for me, as a writer, I just have to write down my frustrations. Hence the time I have just spent blogging when I obviously should be cleaning. However, it is cheaper than counseling, which I would truly need if I did not write! So, I'm off to tackle the living room. At least then when Stan gets here, if I can keep him out of the back of the house all weekend, I might be able to convince him I have done something today!!

Have a great weekend everyone!