Inch-by-Inch...
It is May now, which means we have been in our house almost a year now. I have decided that you have to really live in your house for about a year before you REALLY know how to live in it. When you move in you just put things where you THINK they should go, then after living in a house you figure out where you really WANT them to go. OR, maybe I am just one of those people that need a change of scenery and I will probably be rearranging things the rest of my life. Whatever the reasoning behind it, I have been crazy busy trying to organize my house from top to bottom, inch-by inch! It's how it's gotta be done. It all started back when we let Sarah have the spare bedroom. All the stuff that was taking up space in that room had to go somewhere else, which means that we had to move it to another room, so that room's gotta be organized, and on and on til the whole house has to be rearranged(musical rooms). Today I spent the bulk my day in Caden's room. Not because his room was in anyway a part of the "musical Room". We weren't planning on moving anything in or out of his room, but simply because his room was a disaster. I thought about taking a picture, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I would like to remain in complete denial that I ever allowed any room in my house to get that messy. I can't understand how one of my offspring can sleep at night with so much clutter all around him. All of my asking, nagging, and even threatening didn't work so I finally tackled the mess with him. Caden just really LIKES STUFF!!!! To me I see JUNK everywhere. Caden sees TREASURE. As we sat and sorted his junk/treasure he told me a story about every little thing I picked up.
"That is the ring.....gave me for Valentines day when I was in preschool......that is the token ......gave me when we went to see the planes and I don't want to forget about him....that is the paper I drew at Grandma's house......that is the ring you found on the ground and gave me that one day mom, don't you remember that day.........
And so the conversation went, on and on about all his little treasures and why they all had so much meaning for him.
I am trying to be more grateful, or at least a little more respectful of the sentimentality's of a little 6 year old boy and maybe try and see the world through his eyes. After many hours, we narrowed down a whole room floor of treasures, to a ("treasure")box full. We hung some pictures in his room and a new jet from the ceiling, turned on his lamp, and it looked wonderful. I kept going on about how nice it looked and wasn't he so happy. I didn't really get much reaction out of him. We had some ice cream together and Caden seemed happy for the time we spent together. As I was putting him to bed he grabbed his blanket from the playroom and dragged it across the wide open floor in his room. He started to climb into bed, stopped, turned and looked at me with a big smile and said,
" The one really good thing about having my room clean, is that now when I drag my blankie on the floor, I don't get a ton of toys tangled up in it".
And that DID IT! All my nagging did nothing for that boy, but when he took that clutter free walk to bed, he learned for himself the benefits of a clean room. Hopefully now I've got him converted!