Yet More Differences

Our friend, Nicki, is moving in with us on Tuesday. The Toy Room will be her bedroom. So . . . we MUST clean out the Toy Room - fast.

Yesterday, Don had the children remove all the bags of stuff I had already bagged up and put on the train table. He wanted them to sort through the junk, throw out anything that's broken or too young for our children, put the REAL nice stuff aside for a yard sale, and get the rest ready for Good Will. We have toys and bags strewn from one end of the house to the other. It's a huge mess. Certainly not the way I would have done things.

I've already gotten rid of about 6 bags of junk. I piled everything within reach into large garbage bags during the day. Then, at night, after the children were in bed, I'd sit in the Den and sort them, one bag at a time, labeling each as I went. The most mess at any one time was one bagful of stuff. Now we have at least 8 bagfuls of stuff - everywhere - and the children have pulled about 60 items out that they still "love" and want to keep. But, of course, the keepers aren't put away neatly in their room, they're left wherever the child last played with it.

Late last night, Nicki came by with some friends to show them her room. As we made our way gingerly on the tiny path through the dining room and hallways which look like a toy graveyard, I was embarrassed to death. As if it's not enough that the boxes from our decorations are still lining the hallways, waiting to be put back in the attic, now we have an unbelievable mess with toys and bags.

Then she walked into the Toy Room. It honestly looked like it hadn't been touched. While I could see some improvement, I'm a fairly-well trained eye. I knew where all those bags HAD been, but her friends who have never seen the room saw only mass mess. How would this room ever be ready for her move on Tuesday.

I assured them it would be ready. Truth is, I don't know how, either, but Don and I'll figure it out together. The problem for me isn't the mess of toys, or the bookshelf (which I've already moved into a nice space I made for it in the living room), it's the train table, the HUGE metal organizer with bins that Don bought last year hoping to put order in the room, and the several other storage units we've purchased and put in there over the years. That's a lot of furniture with no home.

When I woke up this morning, I headed straight for the Toy Room. My plan was just to get all the books out and moved back onto the bookshelf that now resides in the library/music room side of the living room. But as I began making piles of books that had not been on the bookshelf and were strewn all over the floor by some toddler avid reader, I realized that I first needed to make a path for myself. I began getting rid of junk. I filled up one garbage bag with toys to be sorted and two bags with trash and there is now at least half the room with nothing on the floor. Unbelievable how much progress you can make in a short time when it's Mommy doing the work, not Daddy and the kids. And nothing that I took out of the room ended up anywhere else in the house except for the trash that is now sitting neatly in front of our kitchen trashcan because I'm still in my jammies and don't want to offend the neighbors and the books which will end up organized and neatened up on the appropriate bookshelf.

While I was working, Don appeared in the Toy Room.

"Where did you go?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I responded, quite clueless to what he was talking about.

"I heard you moving around and have been sitting in the kitchen, waiting for you to make an appearance. Aren't you going to wrap Christmas presents? Have breakfast? Tell me what your plan for the day is? Get ready to go shopping?"

"I'm working on the Toy Room, hon," I said a little frustrated. Couldn't he see the progress I had made? Couldn't he tell how much had been accomplished in a short time? Did he even notice the beautiful hardwood floors that we haven't seen in two years?

Then it hit me. No, he didn't notice the progress, the hardwood floors, or the condition of the room. Don just doesn't zone in to stuff like "clean and neat". It makes absolutely no difference to him.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why the Toy Room was still so messy this morning and why we have toys strewn all over the house.

I'm praying the children turn out like me instead of like him - at least in THIS one area.