To Clean A Small Mess Requires A Big Mess

In the process of changing rooms around, I decided to empty all of the toys into the living room and send all of the books to the basement. They will be sorted into keep vs donate/garage sale as I get time. This is my cleaning process: in order to clean up a small mess, I need to make a bigger mess, then sort through everything so I know what's missing pieces, what's broken, and what needs to be cleaned. So, this is what my living room currently looks like with everything from the kids rooms except clothes dumped here for sorting. It is a mess. Not a fun mess for me, but it sure is for the kids.

Apparently this is the wrong way to clean. The right way to clean somehow involves everything having a place and then everything magically finding its way to its place to stay until played with and put back again. As you can see, I have an awful lot of somethings without places, therefore I'm doing it wrong. But the whole living room needs a do-over anyway. That's what started this. Only I can't get to the desks until I get the bedrooms sorted out.

The mess of toys in the front room surrounded by all the clutter. It is a disaster. The room was a disaster to begin with, just look at all that clutter on the desks against the wall. That is what started this project to begin with!

These piles make me twitchy... I cannot wait to get my books in the proper order, and that's not even half of them.

But now after washing down the walls and sweeping and mopping the floors, I have realized that my son's room has a purple wall. Don't shrug and say, "So?" to me. IT'S A PURPLE WALL! And my brain is starting to itch because of it.

Under normal circumstances, this would not be a huge issue. (And for the last year it's been a non-issue because he shared the room with his sister.) However, circumstances at my house are not normal. I'm not normal. You have no idea how hard it was for me to cave and dress a daughter in pink when I first had a girl. After having five daughters who loved loved loved their princess pink, I am so very ready to have a NOT pink room for my only son.

So now that I have a giant pile of toys in one room, and stacks of books in another, I am ignoring the above listed messes because I desperately want to paint. And I can't find the paint!! I bought a five gallon bucket of cream colored paint when we moved into this house, and I have no idea where it is. I can find the blue and the apple green and the kelly green, but not the cream. And I need the cream so I can mix the rest of the blue with it to cover that stupid purple color.

Which honestly is so light it's almost white, but *I* can see that it's purple, so it bugs the crap out of me. And I don't care that my son might love the color purple. To my knowledge he doesn't yet have a favorite color, so I don't think he cares one way or the other. He can wear pink oxfords and button-downs when he's older, I don't care. I care that my only son has a purple wall right now, and something about that is pushing the "Neurotic" button in my head. I am sitting down writing about it to try to calm down because I can't find the paint and I'm ready to explode because everything is a mess and I'm not getting it cleaned up fast enough.

Right now I'd settle for some wallpaper with trucks or abc's or comic book figures or Disney/Pixar's Cars, or blocks and balls or something in primary colors.

My husband is rolling his eyes and staying a safe distance away. My little ones are running underfoot and playing with all of the toys and toy containers, totally excited about their new environment. However, they're also keeping a safe distance, since earlier they were naughty. Naughty in a 'while mom is washing the walls and baseboards and mopping the floor in our rooms, we'll paint her bathroom walls with her Bare Minerals make-up' kind of naughty. And while yes, I love my children more than I love my expensive make-up, I find it one more thing on my overwhelming list.

And who made my overwhelming list? me. Yes, I know this. But that's the thing about mom's lists. They just never get completely done, or other things get added that have more priority. I just want my house to feel clean and uncluttered and organized. That's all. I know it takes work to achieve it, I just wish I was faster at it. And wow, I'm totally whining about this. There should be some funny anecdote in all of this, but all that I can think right now is "Where is my paint???" and "Please make this headache go away!!" and "God, if you're listening, I could really use a Calgon moment and some energy..."  or hey, while I'm dreaming, why not add getting caught up in some Amber intrigue and get carted off to another shadow for a while... now THAT would be an awesome calgon moment if ever there was one.

Wish list:
- some cute curtains and wallpaper or decals for my son's room. Cute as in BOY cute. No ponies or fairies or pink barbie princess crap. Horses and farmers and construction vehicles and primary colored cars, trucks and ABC's would do just fine. Anything that says "SO STRONG" and "RAWR" would be extra-fine with me.

- a desk for my daughters' room with drawers and shelves for their sewing, crafting, and science experiments

- proper shelves for toys and books. And fun things for a reading nook.

- Paint. That I can find. That's the proper color for the proper room.

See, you can't even tell the wall on the left is purple in this pic. But it is. Trust me.

The girls' room. Needs a curtain. But the floors and walls are clean, darnit!