Operation Find The Floor

Pretty darn close.

I really am frustrated.  Despite my constant purging of clutter, I still cannot seem to ever clean out enough crap in this house to make it clutter free.  We have too much stuff and half of it seems to end up on the floor.  Walking through my house is like navigating an obstacle course most of the time and I am sick of it.  We have 6 people and all of their stuff crammed into this house and we just don't have room for all of it.  I have looked into a bigger house, but we can't afford it, so the only other option is to get rid of stuff.

I totally lost my mind on my 2 oldest this morning. I went upstairs to wake them up, and found the majority of their Christmas haul all over the floor. And this was something THEY had done -- the 2 oldest. They could not blame this on the 2 little ones. They are smart kids, but they are total slobs. They could be on "Hoarders, The Early Years."

Yeah, this is totally something they would say.

The expensive, professional art easel filled with stuff that the girl child got from my mom is the one that REALLY pissed me off. I never would have bought that for her. I know that all together it was more than $200. She was soooooo excited and promised that she would take care of it, so when I saw the drawer yanked out and all those supplies all over the floor just waiting for the 3 year old Picasso to find and create a new mural on one of my walls, I wanted to strangle her.



The oldest boy has an issue with Legos.  He carries handfuls of Legos around with him and lays them down all over the house.  I have found Legos in the bathroom, on the table, on the floor, on MY nightstand, in the kitchen ON the counter and IN the cabinets, and even in the fridge.  I once pulled back the covers to go to bed and found a handful of Legos and a little Lego man in my bed waiting for me.  It is an obsession, or maybe an addiction.  But when I went upstairs to the loft area that they use as a playroom, it was a sea of Legos.  You could not see the floor.  At all.  He got more Legos for Christmas as well as a cool sort and store Lego box.  I am not sure that his Legos have ever all been in that box.  Before today at least.  As of now, all of the discovered handfuls have been put away.


And the stuff that they want to hold onto astounds me.  I told them to find stuff to get rid of -- anything broken or missing pieces was, I thought, a no brainer.  Nope.  They want to keep the chess set that is missing both kings, and 3 pawns.  They said they could still play with it.  And the broken crayons.  I do not understand why, with the multitude of art supplies in this house they want to keep crayons that are snapped into 1/4 inch sections.  And then there are the multitudes of pictures that they have drawn, or cardboard pieces and whole boxes that they have "decorated" but are torn or falling apart.  It makes no sense. 

Today, we went through the clothes.  My daughter, the 8 year old, is going to be a problem after she hit puberty.  She is super tiny.  I made her cry because I took away shorts from her that were a size 3T.  Yes, they still technically fit her, but they were very short.  (Incidentally, her size gives me hope that she might avoid the battle of the bulge that I wage daily.)  She would wear them out in public if I let her (which I wouldn't).  She calls them her "bootie shorts" and every time she says that it makes me cringe.  If she wants to wear short, tight clothes at 8, what will she be like at 16??!  And she's a fashionista.  Unlike her little sister who loves to live in her big brother's hand-me-downs -- sweatshirts that hit her at the knees, baggy boy-shorts that look like she's going out for the WNBA -- she is definitely my kid.  It is hard for her to realize which clothes actually DO fit her because she'd wear the baggy clothes of her older brother. 


The boys clothes are not a problem.  They don't have enough clothes to make a huge mess.  Their clothes do not spill out of the drawers onto the floor and they are content to wear one outfit from shower to shower instead of changing 6 times in 24 hours. 

Then there are the toys. 4 kids with 2 sets of loving grandparents who will buy them almost everything that they ask for means that we cannot move in this house without stepping on or tripping over some blasted toy.

This happens to me all of the time!

And we have so much stuff that I can never find what I am looking for (and that I am pretty sure we already have), so what do I do?  I go get another one of whatever it is that I can't find.  It is a vicious cycle.  My house has too much random stuff, that I cannot find the important stuff, so I go out and buy more stuff, which makes the clutter problem worse.



So we are de-cluttering.  Again.  I'm getting rid of books, clothes that don't fit anyone, toys no one plays with, shoes that no one wears -- all of it.  I am taking pictures of what I am donating to Goodwill so that if the IRS wants another detailed list I can just send them a picture next year.  I am bound and determined to make this house more organized. 

Seriously, none of us have a clue what's in our rooms.  They are too full.

And I WILL find the floor in every room.  Even mine.


Thank you for reading! Do me a favor and go to the right hand side of this page and click that top button to go Circle of Moms and give me a vote in the Top 25 Funny Mom Blogs contest! This contest only lasts until March 21st, you can vote every day, and I just need to stay in the top 25! You can vote on Top Mommy Blogs and Picket Fence Blogs too, but those two are ranking sites and the voting never ends! :)