clean

Thoughts While Putting Away My Children’s Toys

I recently read Maura Quint’s “The Entirety of My Thoughts As I Eat My Son’s Mac and Cheese Dinner,” cleaned my children’s bedrooms and closet-size playroom, and was then inspired to write this:

Didn’t 4 year olds work in fields 150 years ago? Probably not. That actually sounds awful. But still, mine should at least be capable of putting Chutes and Ladders back in its box, right?

I hate Chutes and Ladders.

They have too many toys. I should donate half of them. Most of them. All but three of them.

Why are there candy wrappers stuffed in the Lego bin?

I am not their maid. A maid would be so nice. And a laundress. And a chef. And a personal trainer. Definitely a personal trainer.

I wonder how many calories I’m burning shoving stuff in bins. I should get one of those Fitbits. Or actually go to the Y. They can play with toys in Child Watch. Toys I don’t have to deal with. I wonder if I can find a place to hide and read in the Y while they play in Child Watch.

Another capless marker, wasted. That’s it. No more markers. Ever.

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD THEM TO PUT THE CAPS BACK ON THEIR GLUE STICKS? No more glue sticks. Ever.

Huh. A Barbie shoe. I thought surely I had vacuumed all those up by now.

Why are there 76 pieces of paper with one line drawn on each of them?

I’m going to have to hide these in the recycling bin to avoid the apocalypse that will surely happen if they find out I’ve recycled their one-line masterpieces.

Maybe my children are hoarders. Maybe there’s a mental issue here. I should email the pediatrician.

I will never allow their rooms to get this messy again. Maybe I should try the Saturday Box. Or the Marble Jar. Or the Popsicle Stick Jar. Or the Reward Chart. I should check Pinterest.

Or maybe I just get rid of it all. I mean, seriously, they’re downstairs playing with empty boxes. Empty. Boxes.

Isn’t it monks who find joy in everyday tasks? I don’t think monks have children, though. They’ve never had to deal with 8,000 .$97 Matchbox cars. Or Rainbow Loom bands. Or Perler Beads. I hate Perler Beads.

I wonder what my friends are doing at work. I bet they’re wearing heels. I bet they had a salad with some kind of candied nut on it for lunch. I bet, after a meeting, everyone picks up their papers and pens and tablets and coffee mugs and puts them away, without any reminders or timers or let’s-see-how-fast-we-can-get-this-done games.

All these crayons are broken and worn down to little nubs. They really need some new crayons. I should get some the next time I’m at the store. And markers. And glue sticks.

At least we’re out of the finger paint stage. Those were some colossal messes.

Gosh, I miss those finger paint pictures on the fridge. Why do they have to grow up so fast?

[SILENT CURSING. A LOT OF IT.] I will not miss the Legos on my bare feet. I don’t care how crazy creative they get with their creations I will not miss those pain-inducing little pieces of plastic.

Why do people even buy Legos anymore? It’s not like they break. Or get old. Where are all the Legos people have been building with since, when were Legos invented, the 70s?

Probably in the trash. Probably parents stepping on them and throwing them, one by one, in the trash.

I actually love that they got Legos for Christmas. They play with them for so long. So much silence for such long periods of time. I should send the Lego company a thank-you note.

Our house cannot handle any more toys. Can I tell people not to buy toys? Is that rude? Is that too minimalist? Is that too Grinch-like? My children do not need any more toys.

We should become minimalists.

Well, minimalists with a few toys. Five each.

But then there’s March. I hate March. How many toys will it take to entertain them indoors in March?

I need more bins.

“And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
We cannot pick it up.
There is no way at all!” —Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

Reclaiming My Bedroom—My Messy Beautiful

Glennon Melton of Momastery recently asked writers to post an essay about their messy, beautiful lives to celebrate the paperback release of her book Carry On, Warrior. I realize she’s using “messy” in reference to life’s big things—parenting, work, marriage, friendship, health. But I decided to take a literal spin on the project and write about one of my own messy beautifuls that I carefully hide behind a closed door—my bedroom.

For months, it’s been a disaster.

Something had to give. Every child goes through tougher periods and for Owen and James, 3 has been hard. With everyone in school in the mornings, I’ve tried to pick up a lot more freelance work. Thankfully, I’ve been successful. Unfortunately, it has taken me many months of 2am bedtimes and feeling like I was failing at stay-at-home parenting as well as freelancing before I allowed myself the grace of sometimes hiring daytime babysitters. I’ve had some odd health things going on, the latest of which requires light therapy treatments up in Cincinnati three times a week. My current life story is the same as all of our current life stories. We’re all busy (even when I try, daily, to live a life of not-busy). It just happens.

Still, something had to give.

So I threw in the towel (literally, into a pile of all the other clean clothes on the floor, waiting to be folded) on trying to maintain a clean bedroom.

It was so easy.

Sophie has a play date and I don’t want the kids getting into the paint? Throw it into the bedroom. Guests coming over and I don’t have time to properly put everything away? Throw it into the bedroom. Seasons change and I don’t have time to switch the clothes over? Stack the boxes in the bedroom.

I would go through and pick things up, put things away. But always there was a clothes basket filled with odds and ends that needed sorted and put away—wooden beads, game pieces, Barbie shoes, car wheels, a broken Nutcracker, loose change, a half-empty pack of wipes, mesh bags used when traveling, pencils that needed sharpened, too-small socks, too-big shorts bought on clearance, the extra contents of a purse acquired when I switched everything else of importance over to another one.

I wasn’t always like this. In my previous life I was managing editor at several magazines, a job that is based around organization. In my previous life I prided myself on having an always-cleaned-out fridge, an organized basement and books arranged alphabetically on my bookshelf. In my previous life I hung up my clothes by sleeve length with a nod toward the color wheel and sorted my M&Ms before eating them.

Children change you.

These days, I’m lucky if my clothes even make it to the closet. Turns out, when I have more than just my wardrobe to deal with, I’m terrible at laundry. Every morning, while sifting through the piles of washed-thanks-to-Andy-who-takes-care-of-that-every-time-he-video-games-in-the-basement-but-per-our-deal-I-never-actually-fold-and-put-away clothes I silently curse and swear I’ll fold everything that night. I continue silently cursing while ironing everyone’s outfits because everything is wrinkled and while giving up on matching socks because everyone has approximately three minutes to get to school before they will be considered late.

While lamenting to a friend about my laundry woes she mentioned that she was hiring a laundress. A laundress. It sounded so decadent, so Downton Abbyish. I daydreamed about my own laundress (a modern Cinderella came to mind) before coming back to the reality that some days the kids are going to have to play a board game (or five) without me and some nights I’m going to have to forgo freelance work and/or skip puttering around on the Internet, reading a book or watching a show.

There’s a threshold for everything. And last night, I reached mine.

Despite my freelance deadlines, despite the fact that I had pulled late nights two nights prior, despite the fact that I’m three episodes behind on “Parenthood,” I cleaned my bedroom.

And instead of dreading it, all day, I looked forward to it. All it took was some rethinking. I wasn’t cleaning my bedroom. I wasn’t giving up play time with the kids or my nightly TV show with Andy. I was reclaiming my bedroom. My beautiful bedroom I purposefully painted off-white and in which I hung floor-to-ceiling white drapes from Ikea to create a sense of calm. My beautiful bedroom with the huge leather chair I found on Craigslist, with the ribbon board my mom made for me years ago hung up behind it, filled with loved mementos, and the broken brushed-brass floor lamp next to it, held together with some twine—my reading nook I never used, because of the pile of clothes encroaching it. My beautiful bedroom with the queen-size bed that more often than not holds five instead of two, the same bed with the wedding album tucked underneath it, which Sophie loves to pull out and look through (when the room is clean enough for her to be able to). My beautiful bedroom with the two Target dressers I so desperately want to replace with antiques, the same dressers that now hold framed photos, alarm clocks and perfume bottles but for years held handmade burp cloths and breast pump parts and were decorated with rings of milk leftover from bottles. My beautiful bedroom with the handmade jewelry cabinet my uncle made filled with handmade jewelry my mother-in-law made. My beautiful bedroom with the non-working fireplace and gorgeous wood-and-mirrored-and-columned mantel that surrounds it, one of the key things that made me fall in love with the house before we even purchased it.

So I took out all the dirty clothes. And old water glasses. And gathered all the loose items and put them in their proper places, which took a ridiculous amount of time (and prompted a glass of wine). Then I turned on “Weeds” on Netflix and for two hours I folded. I folded all the clothes. All.of.them. And put them away.

I reclaimed my bedroom.

I reclaimed my office (which is my bed).

I reclaimed my reading nook and dusted off the pile of magazines next to it, noting the bookmark in my book that hasn’t been moved in weeks.

I reclaimed the floor, another play space in our small, old house.

I reclaimed my bed, which the boys immediately jumped into the next day insisting I make a cave with our down comforter and my arms and feet for them to play in.

I reclaimed my sanity. My sanctuary. The place I go to read. To write. To sleep. To be on my own. To be with Andy. To snuggle with the kids during a middle-of-the-night thunderstorm. To dress for the day ahead. To retreat after a day done well. To hide after a day done poorly. To be.

And now my door is wide open. I’m calmer, just thinking about it. I’ve already allowed myself grace, for when it will invariably get messy again. But I also have given myself permission to reclaim it more quickly. Life is easy when you can throw a bunch of stuff in a room during a super-quick cleanup and close the door. But it’s a short-lived easy. Because even though the rest of the house may be beautiful, there’s still a hidden mess to deal with (isn’t there always?). And already, this morning, I’ve learned this: Life is a whole lot easier when clothes are in drawers and all the socks match.

“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.” —D.H. Lawrence

And now, a giveaway! The folks at Simon & Schuster were kind enough to send me a copy of Glennon’s book, Carry On, Warrior, which I would love to pass on to you. Simply post a comment telling me how you deal with laundry by Saturday, May 10. I’ll randomly choose a winner on Mother’s Day, and send it your way!

A Now-Pink Highchair

Sophie’s dolls (some of which were my dolls, when I was little) eat their meals in the same highchair my dolls used when I was little. Katy and I shared the highchair, as well as a doll crib. It’s seen some great wear, but still, Sophie was thrilled to receive it (Colleen has the crib).

One boring, cold, rainy Saturday afternoon, while the boys were sleeping and Andy was away, I decided we should paint it. Sophie wanted it to be pink, of course, which was easy because we had leftover pink paint from painting her bedroom walls.

And yes, I opened the paint can with a chisel.

And yes, I stirred it with a broken mini-blind rod, which I found in a pile in the basement.

We moved into our house when the boys were three months old. My days were a hard cycle of pumping, feeding, changing, unpacking. Some parts of the move, such as the basement, were never properly dealt with. As the weeks went by and we needed things from the basement we’d dig around in boxes, leaving messes, never organizing a thing. Andy has never minded it but I’ve always felt agitated, walking around our first floor knowing below me was a mini disaster, well beyond your typical basement disaster. (We made a path so our meter reader wouldn’t break an ankle.)

But putting off cleaning the basement is easy to do. Especially with three small children.

However, the frustration I felt trying to find a paint can opener, stirrer and brush in our throw-it-down-the-steps-and-deal-with-it-later basement put me into a full-blown tizzy.

Operation Clean Basement is underway.

Andy is less-than-thrilled.

Back to the highchair. It’s amazing what a couple coats of paint can do. Sophie loved the project. Sure she missed a bunch of spots, and at times she applied the paint too thickly and too evenly (I did, too). Paint got on the kitchen floor (despite the newspaper) the bottom of her feet (and mine), on my elbow and in her hair. But given that I’m a terrible painter, I loved having her help me. Because no matter how it turned out (and honestly, it turned out surprisingly OK), I could say “Sophie helped me!” when anyone commented on the paint job.

“Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.” —Danny Kaye

My Pantry

I promise, this is not a how-to post on how to organize a pantry. There are no links to the baskets I purchased or tips on how to organize canned goods—there is nothing pin-worthy here. Rather, I had to post this picture. Because my pantry never looks like this.

I’d like to blame it on the kids. I could blame James (sort of). Every day he finds something new, something a little taller than the day before, to push/drag/pull into the pantry so that he can climb up on top of it and reach for a snack, like gummy treats, at 9:30 in the morning. But mostly, I’m to blame. Shelf too high? Rarely do I pull a chair over in order to put an item on the “right” shelf. (Check out my pantry in a couple weeks. I guarantee there will be many more items on the bottom shelves vs. the top ones.) Late-night grocery run? A glass of wine and a long-ago recorded show sound so much nicer than properly putting things away. Three potato chips left in a bag? Certainly can’t throw it away, especially when tossing it onto (an incorrect) shelf is so much faster.

But I’ve recently been on a bit of doctor-prescribed-steroid high. I’ve decided taking four little pills call prednisone is pretty much equivalent to drinking an entire pot of coffee in the morning. That said, given that the other side effects of this drug include something called moon face (think of your face, as round and puffy as a full moon—lovely, no?), I highly recommend the coffee versus the drug. But because of this short-term high, our house is becoming (a little) more organized. And with that, I’d like to share a short list of questions I asked myself while cleaning the pantry:

1. It’s not like I never clean the pantry. I’d say, maybe, once a year I go through everything, checking expiration dates, throwing things out. So why, every time I do this, do I find things that expired six years and two moves ago?

2. What is liquid smoke? Why do we have it? Where did it come from? And why do I insist on keeping it every time I clean the pantry simply because there’s no expiration date?

3. How is it possible for the hinge inside of the lid of the trash can to get so dirty?

4. Why are Simple Human trash cans so expensive? You’d think for that kind of money it would feature food-resistant hinges.

5. Why, for the past year, have I thought it necessary to keep four almost-empty bags of dried-out brown sugar?

6. Why do we have so many cans of chickpeas?

7. Every December I find it deeply necessary to buy candy canes. Every summer trip to the beach I find it deeply necessary to buy saltwater taffy. It never gets eaten. Ever. And yet I buy it. And store it. Forever.

8. When I look up a new recipe, and buy ingredients for that new recipe, and invariably take too long to make the recipe therefore allowing all the fresh produce the recipe required to go bad, why do I not find new uses for the recipe’s pantry-ingredients? Like cornichons. Seriously. How difficult would it be to find another recipe for cornichons?

9. How in the world did we store all this stuff when we didn’t have a pantry in our old house?

10. How is it possible that, at least once a week, I can open this door, look inside, convince myself there’s nothing to make, that we have nothing, that we have to go to the grocery and that the only thing left to do is pick up Chipotle?

Yum. Chipotle.

(Another steroid side effect? Unbelievable-akin-to-pumping-milk-for-twin-11-month-old-boys hunger.)

“Even the most resourceful housewife cannot create miracles from a rice-less pantry.” —Chinese proverb

Water and Lavender

A couple weeks ago, Sophie’s room was a mess. (Actually, Sophie’s room always seems to be a mess as of late but I’m talking about one particular day in which it was a mess, a couple weeks ago.) I had to shower. So I asked her to clean her room while I showered.

Halfway through my shower she came into the bathroom (little people coming into the bathroom while I shower is perfectly normal to me now), climbed up on the stool and filled a plastic spray bottle with water. I remembered seeing that spray bottle already full, only five minutes before.

I stuck my head outside the plastic shower curtain, soap still in my hair.

“Sophie, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Cleaning my room,” she said.

“Why do you need water in a spray bottle to clean your room? And what happened to all the water that was in the spray bottle before?” I asked.

“I told you! I’m cleaning my room!” she said.

I really wanted to finish my shower. I hate having to grab a towel, get out, figure out why someone is crying/yelling/not making any noise mid-shower. I hate that water gets everywhere when I do that, I hate how shampoo drips in my eyes when I do that and I hate feeling hot and then cold and then hot again when I do that.

So I (foolishly) ignored the situation.

When I was done with my shower and properly dried off, I walked into Sophie’s room. I felt my bare feet squish into carpet soaked with water. Nothing had been picked up. And sprigs of dried lavender were scattered all over the floor.

“Why is the carpet wet?” I asked (clearly she had sprayed every inch of it with her spray bottle, but I wanted to know why). “And why is there lavender everywhere? And why haven’t you cleaned at all?”

“I have been cleaning!” she said. “The whole time! I cleaned the carpet with my spray bottle. And spread lavender everywhere to make it smell good. That’s cleaning.”

I thought of all my lavender-scented cleaning products, and how she loves to sniff them when I’m using them. I sighed. The carpet eventually dried. I helped her pick up her toys. And I’m still, occasionally, finding little sprigs for lavender in her room.

“Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.” —Hoosier Farmer