Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Cleaning, Christmas and other random thoughts

I just finished cleaning up my oldest two daughters' bedroom. It is not a task I enjoy or look forward to. Mainly because I know it will end with one or more people crying and lots of frustration on my part. My oldest daughter is an extreme packrat. I just know she is going to be on some TV show in the future that will air on TLC or HGTV. Annie is a wonderful young lady and whomever ends up marrying her will be so fortunate. However, I also think about that young man and giggle. He will be living in a house full of stuff. I can only hope that as Annie gets older she will begin to develop some of my organizational zealous and then maybe her stuff can at least be tucked away and out of sight in pretty little bins and boxes. If not....well I don't even want to picture it.

My second oldest daughter is just..... Well, there's really no other way to say it. She can be a bit of a slob. Now don't get me wrong, she doesn't have moldy food or totally gross stuff laying around in her bedroom. It's just that she NEVER cleans anything up! She will sit down to play and then move on to another acitivity without so much as closing a drawer. Eventually, that leads to a horrendous mess. Maybe I am at fault for this. I distinctly remember singing the "Clean Up" song with her when she was younger and she has certainly been told to clean up. Whatever the reason, she just doesn't clean up. I do continue to ask her to clean up but it never ends well. I am hoping it's just a phase and that as she gets older the mess will start to drive her nuts. I'm probably fooling myself.

Anywho....the thing that really drives me nuts is the toys! I threw out umpteen Polly Pocket outfits that were torn in half. I picked up numerous Barbie shoes. I stepped on about a zillion Littlest Pet Shop accessories. The doll clothes were all stuffed back into their basket. The stuffed animals were once again tidied up. Don't even get me started on the My Little Pony stuff! THE TOYS!!!!!

Christmas is around the corner and I am ready to crawl into a hole! I love Christmas! I love the decorating. I love how I can help others. I love my family coming to visit. I love baking. There are plenty of reasons that I love the holiday season. Toys are not one of them. I struggle each year to figure out what to buy the kids. We have three girls so there aren't many girl toys that we don't have some version of. I know that we have two different See-n-Says, a few magnadoodles, more Cabbage Patch Dolls than I can even count and the list goes on. It's just so hard to think of anything original to buy for them. A couple of years ago I resolved that I was only going to buy things that went with toys we already had. I figured if we got Barbie stuff then that was fine because we had a place for the Barbie stuff. If we got Polly Pockets, that was fine because Polly had her own special spot. The problem was that my girls did not need anymore Barbie or Polly Pocket stuff. By New Year's Day they were sick to death of Barbies and Polly Pocket and there was not much else to play with. Last year I thought it would be great to get them toys that they could actually do cool stuff with....a sewing kit, a chemistry kit, an EZ Bake oven, etc... The problem was that all of these toys required that Mom or Dad help or supervise when they were used. What a hassle! I love to hang out with my kids and do fun stuff but I don't have time to play EZ Bake oven every single day and my husband does not want to come home from work and do a chemistry experiment every single night. I guess the key is to strike a balance.

Ok, so I am sorry to have rambled on and on. I suppose my brain is fried from listening to Annie explain to me why it was so important that she keep that huge pile of cut up cardboard box pieces.

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