As “The Mom”, I am expected to know where everything thing is in this household from Patches to pagers.  One question I’m constantly hearing is “Mom!   Do you know where *insert item here* is?”  Usually, I do.  Not because I have some sort of super mommy power.  No, the reason I know where everything is?  That’s because I’m the one who puts everything away.  I’m constantly following behind my children and putting things back.  When they were little, I didn’t mind.  A two year old is a force of nature.  It’s a fact of life.  But a 5 year old?  Well,  I’m thinking a 5 year old can help with the clean up.  

So I started to insist on some help putting away toys.  Immediately, I began hearing choruses of “but I don’t know where it goes!”  I had a hard time believing this.  If you can take it out, you can put it back, right?  I tried arguing this but my sound logic fell on small deaf ears.  So I have decided on a different tactic.  In our new spiffy toy cabinets, I have upped the ante.  Behold the beauty of my new fool proof toy storage system!

Labels + pictures =  no excuses.

Everything has a home.  What?  You are only 3 and can’t read?  Well, how about a nice picture?

A place fore everything.  Isn’t it beautiful?  Brings a tear to a mother’s eye.  Sniff.

I’m thinking even a 3 year old can figure this system out.  That’s the hope anyway.

My kids are excited by this new idea.  They love being able to find everything they need at once.  Clean up is easy as I pass out a bin to each kid and tell them to collect everything that goes in it.  Then we replace it and pick another.  I have gone from hourly worker to management and I like it, baby.   The only person not so happy?  That would Kevin.  Up until now, Kevin has relied heavily  on the “I don’t know where it goes” excuse.  His idea of cleaning is to walk around the room kicking toys out of the middle and to the sides.  When this cleaning technique was criticised, he was quick to whip out the ignorance defense.  Well, when he came home last night and saw the fruits of my labor, he grew a little quiet and a frown appeared on his face.  Under questioning, he admitted that he much preferred his kicking method to my organization.  Sorry hubby.  You’re going to have to come up with a new excuse to get out of clean up time now!

After a very long week, I have progress!  The cabinets are up and waiting to be filled.   Even more impressive, after working together on this project, Kevin and I are still speaking to eachother.  Amazing!

From Balance to Chaos.  Oh how quickly the pendulum swings.

I have decided to undertake a new project.  Because, really, I so don’t have enough to do with my time.  Ha!  I’ve convinced/dragged Kevin into redoing our bonus room.  This room is a true jack of all spades.  It’s the craft room, the computer room, the play room and the guest room.  That’s a lot of hats for one space to wear so most of the time, it’s a disheveled mess.  It gets hard use from every person in this house.  Up to know, it’s been cobbled together.  My old computer desk from high school + the craft table from the basement from 69th + a broken trundle bed + a ton of kid toys.  It ain’t a pretty sight even on it’s best day.  So the great over haul.

First, I tackled my craft space.  Here’s the before shot.

I’m tired of open shelves and clutter so I’m opting for a wardrobe cabinet from IKEA and hoping to hide all the chaos behind clean, closed doors.  So far, so good.  The table is an old odd piece that Kevin will someday replace (right Kev?) but for now it fits.  I also moved to the opposite corner of the room to snag a window and some nice natural light.  Very exciting.

That’s Leina being her normal odd self.  I have no idea what she is doing but she wanted me to take of picture of her so here it is.

Kulia is much more interested in “helping” me.  There is nothing quite as frustrating as a 3 year old trying to help you install IKEA cabinets so I gave her the tape measure and set her to work.  She takes her task very very seriously.

This is my jedi knight pictures of Kulia.  May the force be with her.

Over the weekend we headed up to Ikea to check out counter tops for our stalled kitchen remodel.   We found a very nice butcher block top for the desk area and were very happy with that.  As we walked out, however, we turned the corner by the bedroom area and saw this incredible daybed set up.  It was awesome.  Both Kevin and I stopped in our tracks and said, “this is exactly what we want to do in the bonus room!”  Then we looked at eachother with that manical Ikea-esque gleam in our eyes.  Could we do it?  The kitchen isn’t done, we’re leaving for Hawaii in a week, school is starting up…. but there it was.  All set up and lovely and perfect and we decided, what the heck!  Lets go for it!  We installed a kitchen, dang it, how hard can a little bed and cabinet thingy be?

Don’t worry, we managed to restrain ourselves enough to wait on ordering until we get back.  But the last few nights I’ve tossed and turned in bed trying to figure out how to rearrange everything.  No matter how I try, I keep coming up with the same answer.  I can’t.

You see. most of our furniture was purchased for our 69th house.  It fit just right in all the little nooks and crannies of an old craftsman home.  When we moved to the ‘burbs, we hauled all our nice little pieces here and scattered them about.  But the sad truth is, they don’t really work.  It’s time I parted with the old and embraced the new but it’s so hard to give away things that I’ve lived with for so long.  But our house is full now so if I bring in something new, something old is going to have to go.  Sigh.  Well, I suppose I can wait on the weeding of furniture until I get back from vacation but it will be hard.

Even harder, I’ve decided to totally redo my craft corner as well with (wait for it) a new Ikea desk and storage system.  Yup.  This room is going to be totalled!  I’ve already started cleaning out the craft goodies and very slowly tossing the old stuff.  But it’s hard!  Oh so hard!  I want to keep every scrap of fabric, every sheet of paper, every pad of ink but I know I need to reign it in and focus.  Focus. 

Darn you Ikea.  Why must you flaunt your evil designs so?  Can you give a poor woman no peace?  Must I flee to an island to escape your devious influence?  Well, ok!  If you insist…..

I got my garden started late this year. The weather was truely horrible all through June and I just couldn’t bring myself to get out in the mud. So I’m paying for it with a very very late harvest this year. My zucchs have just started flowering and there is one sad little green tomato hanging on right now. Looks like my summer bounty should arrive right about the time I board the airplane for Hawaii. Ah well. Guess that’s just the sacrifice I’ll have to make. Of course this doesn’t stop me from picking up more starts and thumbing through gardening books. I’ve decided to give brussel sprouts a try. Supposedly, they are a fall/winter plant but hey, why not plant ’em in the middle of summer and what happens, right? Yeah, I know. I’m a gardening dork but doesn’t seem to stop me from trying!