Hopeful and Aweigh

Things have not normalized yet around here. The kids are tired and cranky, picking fights with one another and crying or yelling over the smallest infraction. We've attempted to move bedtime earlier, or at least we've had the intention to do so, but we find them still awake at least an hour past their bedtimes.


D is fussy and fitful, presumably working on another tooth, but she sees the things her siblings do to one another and to her and copies them as any toddler would. I can't help but point out to the big kids where she's learning these lovely activities. She's morphed into a curmudgeonly old woman at times, grunting ahg! with disdain when the item she carries slips from her grip. Just as suddenly, however, she bursts into the most delightful toddler giggles.


I've made some progress on de-cluttering the house (and hopefully my mind). It's a small dent, but a dent nonetheless. My hope is to continue to plug away at at least some small reorganizing task every day. Yesterday I cleaned Miss M's bedroom. It was not a thorough cleaning though since I didn't tackle underneath the bed or the "far side" of the bed, but I feel better about the state of her room mostly because you can actually see the floor. She has a little room back to play with her 472975 toys. I also went through several boxes of papers and miscellaneous stuff and threw away a few bags of stuff. I dug through the basket that was supposed to hold Ms. D's diapers but somehow became a catch-all for anything pertaining to her. It now holds diapers and the 2 pairs of shoes that still fit her instead of the 6 pairs that she has outgrown. There is much, much more to do but seeing the progress I made yesterday and the day before is encouraging. I can do this and get my home and my life back under control.

The holidays have passed us and it's time to get Aweigh back in progress. I'm setting the start date for January 18. More details tomorrow, but if you want to participate please send me an email letting me know, and also what you will donate as a prize.

So we enter the last week of the big kids' school break not tired of one another, but tired. The week will again go too quickly and they will be back in school and I'll wonder where the time has gone. Seven more days to try to make happy memories and just be together with these little (not so little as they used to be) people that mean the world to me.

Tackle it Tuesday- The Hallway Edition

I am, as I said, attempting to reorganize my home. Not that it was very organized before Miss D came along 7 1/2 months ago, but since her birth our home (which was already bursting at the seams) has become even more crowded with things.

There is the requisite baby gear, that as D grows we will no longer need that nonetheless take up precious space in our small home. With Christmas came more toys, more things and with another child seemed to add three times as much stuff.

I've been trying to look around our home for underutilized space that I can use to store, or at least put away some of this stuff.

Enter our upstairs hallway. This is a short hallway that is from Craig's and my bedroom (which is directly to my right when I'm taking the photo) to Miss M's room (which you can see part of the door frame to her room in the photo). Like I said, the hallway is short, but we've had this little storage chest there for several years that opens and I've stashed Craig's Dale Earnhardt model cars inside. I put photos on the top. I love all the photos, but mostly they just gather dust because I am lazy and do not dust nearly as often as I should.

Also, when we put up Miss D's crib in our room we moved a bookcase that my dad had made for me when I was little out to the hallway to hold bedtime reading books. You can't actually see the bookcase in the photo because it has several books piled on top of it.

I had a brainstorm the other day and bought a square shelf like I bought for our dining room/living room area a couple of years ago. It really is much nicer looking, besides adding a bunch of storage space that we weren't using to its potential. I moved the other chest into our bedroom into the last available floor space we had!

Things

There are people who find no value in holding on to items and trinkets as remembrances. They toss greeting cards as soon as they're read. They donate their kids' clothes as soon as they're outgrown. They know that the thing; the memento; is not the memory or the person.

I am not one of those people. This has been cause for much consternation for my husband over the years. He's learned to ask about everything before he throws it away. Really? You want to keep the empty butter tub? He'll usually shrug and put it back where he found the thing, muttering as he goes about his business of trying to keep the house from becoming one of those places where people have things piled to the ceiling.

Okay, it's not that bad. But I do like to keep things. You never know when you're going to need an empty plastic tub for the kids to mix paint in, or to fill with water for them to clean their brushes. No, I don't have any empty butter tubs laying around right now. I'm using that as a hypothetical example.

But these are just the things that I think I might have a use for in the future. Those things, once I see there really isn't any need to keep them, I am able to part with pretty easily.

It's the mementos that really get me. And everything can become a memento it seems. I'm cleaning and reorganizing our basement and I came across some white paper streamers that I had stuck on a shelf. Really, it's just paper but I picked it up on the way out from the Blue Man Group concert so I kept it. I don't know what I'm planning to do with it. I imagine I'll just move it from place to place in our basement over the years until my kids find it when I'm gone. They'll shake their heads at each other and chuckle. Mom saved everything didn't she? they'll say as they toss it in the overflowing garbage can.

I keep some things simply because they were given to me by family members. I no longer use or display the thing, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

We're also reorganizing our bedroom to try to make room for D's crib. While dusting I found proof that I haven't dusted in there in a loooooong time. I found a prescription bottle with 7 pills in it. It was oxycodone from when K was born. Yes, more than four years ago.

What is wrong with me? Is there a pill I can take that will make me stop saving things? Gah!

Tackle it Tuesday

I've been reading 5 Minutes for Mom for at least a few months now. They have some great contests there as well as some regular helpful features.

Tuesdays are called "Tackle it Tuesday" there and I usually read and think, "wow these women have a lot of energy," close the page and move on.

Today I actually did something. And I encourage you to do the same if you haven't really looked lately.

I cleaned out the medicines that we've had stockpiled. I threw away a plastic grocery bag full of expired medicine. Honestly, some of it expired in 2005.

Let me add a disclaimer: I ALWAYS check expiration dates on medicine before giving it to my children or taking it myself. But obviously some of the medicine I'd bought hadn't been used in quite some time.

So go clean out your old medications...you might be surprised at all the storage space you open up!