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!

It’s crazy how amazingly easy it is to move a blog.  So here I am in my new home.  I’m still trying to decide if I like this theme (design) or if I want to change it, but changing the theme is also very easy so if you hate it, just say so.  I’m not sure I like the giant black letters in the title, but I can’t seem to change that without changing to a different theme so maybe that font will grow on me.

One of the reasons I’ve been wanting to move the blog is because a lot of people had a hard time leaving a comment when my blog was on Blogger.  Only a few people commented so there were lots of times that I felt like I was talking to myself (which is fine since I use this as sort of a family chronicle) but then I’d have people tell me that they woke their kids up by laughing at something I wrote, or that they read the blog with their husband every morning, or that reading my blog makes them feel less like they’re the only crazy person out there.  I actually love hearing that because one of my goals in writing this blog is to bust the myths that everyone’s house is spotless, everyone’s kids are well-behaved, and everyone is living the life of June Cleaver.

Anyway, I know people are reading it because often when I try to tell a friend about something that happened in my life, they stop me and say, “Oh yeah, I read about that on your blog.”  And sometimes I get unsolicited assistance, like the link to sign up for Supernanny that Lana sent me a while back after watching a video of Naughty Norah.

So I know you’re out there, and I want you to be able to comment easily and often.  If I write about how my kid told her teacher that, “Mommy said the f-word at breakfast,” you could leave a comment about your kid ratting you out on something.  Or if I sound like I’m getting too close to the edge (again), you could leave a comment saying, “Meet me at the Met Bar Friday night at 7 for a Blood Orange Cosmo.”  Get my drift?  If you’re reading this, click that little “Leave a Comment” link down below, and tell me that you’re here!

I don’t think most people consider me lazy but yesterday I did feel a little like a slug when I couldn’t work up the energy to take all three kids into Starbucks.  I REALLY wanted a coffee to enjoy at soccer practice while the other kids played on the playground and I vegetated in the car.  Why the hell don’t we have drive-thru Starbucks around here anyway?!  They’re all over the south!

So I did what tired-out moms have been doing since the good old days, when they’d send their kid down to the corner store for a pack of butts (my mom didn’t smoke but a lot of my friends’ moms did), I sent Aliya into Starbucks with my “grande non-fat mocha” written out on a scrap of food wrapper I found on the floor of my car.

I swear, the first woman who came out (wearing a modified snuggie and smoking a butt) after Aliya went in gave me a look like “you lazy slug, sending your kid into Starbucks.”  I hoped that the two kids fighting over a paper clip in the back seat would illustrate my immediate need for coffee and my reluctance to unbuckle their restraints and take them within proximity of breakables.

The coffee took a really long time, so I started to have those negative thoughts, like maybe someone kidnapped Aliya out the front door while I waited at the back, or Starbucks employees were holding her in the storage room until DSS arrived.  She finally came out, with another woman who gave me a look like “I’m feelin you with those three kids and a jones for coffee,” and I enjoyed every sip.

And a personal assistant was born.
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