I’m really starting to enjoy traveling for business again.  There was quite a long period of time when it was almost impossible for me to travel for work because of the kids.  But today I flew from Providence to Philadelphia for a one-day meeting tomorrow, and I barely made any preparations.  Ben facilitates most of the after-school activities anyway, and Grandma is adept at the lunch/snack/breakfast/bus routine.  I didn’t make any lists, obsess over anything, or lie awake last night wondering what I forgot to pack.  I got the kids to school this morning and then had an hour to get myself presentable, pack, and be on my way.  No problem.

The flight went smoothly, the rental car woman couldn’t have been nicer, and I arrived at the hotel with enough time to chill out before going out to dinner with my team-mates, where were were served the largest (no lie) plates of food I’ve ever seen.  I didn’t have to urge, bribe, or threaten anyone if they didn’t eat, nobody made a mess, and I didn’t have to whip out my purse-sized packet of wipes and wipe down any of my dinner companions.  Refreshing!

Now I’m back at the hotel and headed for bed – 3 or 4 hours earlier than usual!  Yes!!  I heard there’s a meeting coming up in Peoria.  I want in!!!

Update:  The next morning when one of our VPs asked me how I slept, I said, “I slept great!  Nobody climbed into bed with me…I mean, uh, no KIDS climbed into bed with me…or anybody else…”

A couple of months ago we spent about a week with a flooded basement, followed by a couple of after-floods.  We moved most of the stuff to higher ground in time, but some things got ruined and in the process of moving everything we found a lot of junk we hadn’t looked at in a very long time.  Our neighbor had flooding too, so we decided to split a dumpster and clean house.

The 12-yard dumpster has come and gone.  My sister-in-law was here over the weekend and said, “I thought you were going to get rid of a bunch of stuff.”  Apparently, removing 6 cubic yards of stuff from our house didn’t make a noticeable dent.

The other reason we needed a dumpster was because we had a small pile of construction debris from the countertop project that the town trash pickup won’t take because they don’t accept building materials.  It’s a sad testament to our procrastination problem that the satellite image of our house on Google Maps shows yet another pile of construction debris, from the bedroom closet project.  We also had a bunch of leftover siding from the siding project.

We currently have NO CONSTRUCTION DEBRIS.  Yay!

Dumpster, Pre-Purge:

Dumpster, Post-Purge:

Last month I completed the 29 Gifts challenge, and since then several people have asked me what I learned from it.  I learned two things:

1) I give way too many gifts because most of the gifts I gave during the challenge I would have given anyway.  I give so much of my time and energy away that I don’t have enough time or energy for myself or my family.  That’s probably not what the 29 Gifts people had in mind, but it’s the truth.

2) I was more focused on the task at hand (gift-giving) because of the challenge.  As soon as I woke up I would start thinking about what gift I was going to give that day.  It was a must-do item on my to-do list each day, so it got done.  I didn’t put the gift-giving off until tomorrow.

So.  I’m going to take what I learned and apply it.  My family and I have now embarked on a new challenge – 29 Messes.  I may have to change it to 99 Messes if I’m going to see any difference in my house, but I think it would be too overwhelming to start with 99 so I’ll start with 29.

The basis for this challenge is the fact that I can’t stand my house.  It’s not the house’s fault.  The house is actually a nice functional house, even though it was built in 1927 and moved to its current location in the 50’s.  It has enough bedrooms for everyone, a big family room that Ben and I built (seriously!) and a basement, garage, and attic space that is currently overcluttered and underutilized.  The yard is not bad when it’s neat and orderly.  The problem is that “neat and orderly” is not a phrase that anyone would use to describe my house – at least not for the last 9 years.

It’s not me.  I am neat and orderly by nature.  When I lived alone and had lots of time on my hands, my condo was neat and orderly to the EXTREME.  This is what my condo looked like:

And if you had opened any of the cabinets, drawers, or closets, you would have found containers labeled with the contents – everything had a place to live.

In my house, half the stuff we own has no place to live, and the other half got lost on the way back to its place and staggered off into someone else’s place (de ja vu).  The blame lies squarely on:

1) The Kids. I could make it a full-time job to follow them around and clean up after them.  I have tried putting their toys in time-out (they forget about them and we find the bags of toys after they’ve outgrown them), throwing toys away (Ben rescues them), creating routines to help them remember to pick up their toys, punishing them when they don’t, rewarding them when they do…all fruitless.

2) Ben. He’s a Hider.  When a cabinet gets too full, he puts a bunch of stuff in a bin or a plastic bag and puts it in the garage.  When I freak out because I can’t find my Sangria jug, he says that whenever I need one of the hidden items he’ll go get it for me.  Eventually we both forget that we even own the items, until one day we get a pleasant surprise when we open a giant Hefty bag and find the ice bucket (you may think this sounds funny but this is EXACTLY what happened 2 weeks ago).

3) Me. I have NO TIME.  NONE.  I am always running ahead to the next event, the next item on my to-do list (which I’m already late in completing), or the unforeseen emergency.  I put stuff in piles but I never take anything out.  I work at home a lot so I have work mixed with school forms, bills, kids’ artwork, magazines…you get the picture.  I’ve stopped noticing the writing on the walls (literally), the fingerprints on the windows, and the stuff that’s fallen off the to-do list.  Considering that I’m an organized person living in chaos, this makes me CRAZY!!!

In case you’re thinking “Hoarders” or “Clean House,” I can assure you that it’s nowhere near that bad.  It’s just not the way I want it – with a place for everything and everything in its place.  I realize that restoring order is not completely within my control, but I think I can improve the situation.  That’s why we will be tackling 29 messes (or 99) in the near future.  Some messes will be larger than others, but the point is to not only get rid of the mess but to figure out how to improve the situation that caused that particular mess.

Taking on the 29-Mess challenge is already working.  On Friday we started working on one mess that’s still in progress since we can’t find the saw to cut the wood to finish the project, but over the weekend I cleaned one kitchen cabinet, the kitchen windowsill (full of miscellaneous odds and ends), two kitchen baskets, and the top of the washer and dryer.  We also pruned 4 bushes and did some other yard work.  Not bad for a weekend that also included 3 soccer games, dinner with the in-laws, and a cookout with the neighbors.

5 messes down, 24 (or 94) to go!