...our whole house, that is! My house is ABSOLUTELY trashed! And I have no one to blame but myself, although I guess the 25 people we had here Christmas day probably contributed a little bit. But I could have had all of that cleaned up by now if one thing hadn't led to another. We are rearranging the house. Let me back up to find the first event that occurred to spark this move:
Actually, it was two events, one ongoing and one actual event. The ongoing event is that for the past year Alex has been calling the guest room her room. I suppose since it was her room it was actually no longer a "Guest Room"; however, when we had guests, she would get kicked out to sleep wherever but only after much, much, much (did I say "much" already?) prodding to clean it up because she's quite the slob (I can call her that because I was just like that growing up, plus I'm her mother!). It was a battle and one we grew weary of.
Then there was the boys' bunk bed. They have roughhoused on it so much that several of the slats on the top were broken and Jacob was constantly reminding us to do something about it so Michael wouldn't come crashing through on top of him. While my handy husband could have fixed the slats, why bother when my rough boys will just continue to break them? So in the interest of the safety of our youngest son, we took the beds apart. As we were taking them apart, I had a brilliant idea (not looking quite so brilliant at the moment as I sit here with piles of stuff precariously balanced on my desk). I suppose there is a third contributing factor to my brilliance. Up until this point, the playroom has doubled as our schoolroom. While I love the space, I hate the mess.
So here's what we're doing: the boys are going to move into the playroom, Alex is moving into the boys' room, and our guest room will once again be a guest room. As for our schoolroom, well, I'm sending the kids to school.
Just kidding.
We're going to do what every other homeschooling family does: school at the kitchen table. The guest room will double as my school "stuff" storage room (neatly, of course, which is my motto). Now I'll be able to school and make lunch at the same time. Or watch the cookies in the oven while we school. Or clean up breakfast while we school. Or just school but feel much less like I'm trapped in a pig sty.
As for my guest room? I don't have to change the sheets everyday as we juggle guests (and we do have a lot of people drop in). We don't have to come up with a place for Alex to sleep. I don't have to go behind her idea of clean at the last minute to actually clean it up. I don't have to contend with dried toothpaste in the guest sink. Or spit on the mirror. Or Pollys laying in a puddle of who knows what on the bathroom floor. Or wet towels that have been on the floor for a week. Or dried shampoo rings in the shower.
This is quite a process, however. I'm questioning my brilliance at the moment, but I'm sure once everyone is settled, we'll love it. In retrospect, I'm thinking it may have been even more brilliant to put away the Christmas stuff BEFORE we started this massive project, but once I get an idea in my head, I have to see it come to fruition immediately so there you go. I am getting a little antsy to have the entire mess cleaned up, though. You see, I'm one of those psychotic people who can't sleep as well if the house is a mess. And I can count on one hand the number of times the bed has gone unmade in the last 5 years. See? Psycho.
But it will get done. It must get done because we have another guest coming tomorrow to stay for a few days. And sometime next week an entire family is dropping in. So it must get done. Quickly.
If I could capture the enormity of the mess in one photo, I would, but it's too spread out, so picture any one disaster area and you've got a visual on our house.
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