Resting Up

I was persuaded to stay home from school for another day, ostensibly to get some rest, but in reality so that I can seriously clean the boys room without interference from them. Alouicious and Elphine, both, are already developing into pack rats--sequestering little bits of cardboard out of the recycling into strange nooks, and gathering broken bits of whatever they can find to "save for later". I am deeply against this habit. The more stuff you save and hang onto, whether bits of cardboard or broken bits of china (my particular hoarding vice), the more you have to be prepared to walk away from should Jesus suddenly decide to come back. I have this fear of being caught in my kitchen with a basket of broken saucers trying to decide to put it down so I can be caught up in the air to meet my Lord.

Anyway, so I'm going to at least get started on their room, and also take a nap, and maybe bake a pie. I don't know.The little ones need to learn to read so maybe I'll just do that today too. Personally, I don't understand why Matt keeps calling me "irrational" just because I'm all weepy from being "too tired" by the evening to "do anything more at all".

You know what! I think I'll chuck it all and go straight for the pie. That baby is going to want to eat again in an hour and I don't think I'll be able to really provide for her unless I've eaten a whole pie myself.

Have a great day!

Just one more post about my awesomely clean house, that's it, I promise

Matt says I shouldn't blog about my awesomely clean house because it sounds prideful. He is a smidgen right. I can feel myself pitching off the cliff of humility into the pit of puffed pride. However, we're celebrating the triumph of a whole month of a deeply clean and orderly house this week and so I'm sorry, I Have to blog about it. Plus, Jeanne asked how we get the kids to pick up their piles and piles and piles of toys so that's practically an invitation to indulge myself.

Let me start by saying that a month of a clean house is far and away beyond my expectation for anything this side of Everlasting Glory. I've always been basically organized and clean, with a firm knowledge of how to deep clean, though no great desire to do it. Then I married a man with a mother of impeccable taste and house keeping skills whose efforts to impart any of that knowledge to her son had been entirely without success. But my own mother had given me some excellent advice on the eve of my wedding, and that was 'the man you marry is the man you marry. You can't change him and you shouldn't try.' So, I devoted myself to the path of asking for help but of never ever ever nagging. Many people who wanted me to get my excellent husband to do stuff (like remember to send a thank you note, or make a call, or say what he wanted for his birthday) have been deeply frustrated with me over the years because after asking him to do these things once, my policy of No Nagging sets in and I don't ask him a second time, unless you make me feel really guilty. Why the long autobiographical interlude? Because we were two creatures capable of keeping house but in actuality, so entrenched in bad habits that we never managed to have an orderly lifestyle. Whatever was in our hands, we let fall, and there it rested until we had a grand clean up at the end of the week, or month, or right before visitors came.

Two people who let fall the contents of their hands upon the earth is not that big of a deal. But seven people IS, its a HUGE colossal great deal. Our grand clean ups at the end of the day, week, month became so daunting  and dismal that our tempers shortened and flared and we were always discouraged with cleaning all day and still going to bed in a house with lots more work.

And so, in a fit of brilliance, the idea that we should Not Ever Ever Ever let fall the contents of our hands upon the earth, and nor should our children, nor our children's children, nor also the cat, nor the dog, nor any creature that moveth in the house or in the yard hit us as from Heaven itself. The last month has been a moment by moment training for all of us. As I lay my tea cup next to the sink, I say, why don't I wash this cup and put it in the cupboard? And verily, I do. And when Gladys takes out all of Elphine's Laura Ingles Wilder Dolls and makes up the little beds and takes off all their clothes and then begins to walk off into another room, as with one voice, the family rises up and says, 'Gladys! Put those dolls away!' and she does. Romulus has learned that he may play with his knights over the face of the whole house but he has to always clean them up and so he carries them around in an enormous basket with him all day, arranging them in battle and then taking them down. No item of clothing is allowed to remain, alone, in a room on the floor with no people. The person who left it there has to come and get it and put it away. No shoes may scatter themselves over the hallway and rest on the stairway, waiting, waiting to break your neck. ALL shoes go On the shelf in the hall. Inch by inch, moment by moment we're starting to reverse our habits. 

AND, this life change has resulted from the common grace of mutual respect and love, not from frustration and nagging. A month ago, Matt and I looked deeply into each other's eyes and realized This was what we wanted. It wasn't the result of either of us relentlessly complaining about the awful house. And we've put the No Nagging policy in action with the children. I'm not going to endlessly remind and whine at them to pick up. They aren't allowed to leave the room until its clean, so the nagging is completely eliminated. 

And life is so pleasant. And I bake every day now. And pretty soon, school will start, but I have no fear that life will crumble into chaos and ruin. I expect we'll learn a great deal and have a nice time because we won't have to shovel off the desks every day and wade our way through piles of clothes and shoes trying to get to the door or kitchen or office. And, most wonderfully of all, you can drop by any time. I won't spend 15 minutes apologizing for how awful it is, but I probably will stand there hopefully, waiting for you to notice that you can put one foot in front of the other without tripping over shoes and library books. Welcome!

The shoe saga continues

I have my tiny special shoe shelf in place. I intend to take a picture once I locate my camera. Just about everybody needs their picture taken in the next few days because they've all gone puffy and round and I can tell they're about to grow.

I've instructed Elphine and Alouiscious about the shelf--ordinary always worn shoes on the shelf, boots in the back room, everything else in your rooms. For the last 24 hours its worked beautifully. I'm astonished at how satisfying this shelf is. On the whole, despite the objections of my husband, I really like the hall/entrance way, and the fact that you can see the copper pots hanging over the sink directly as you walk in the door.

I know I'm supposed to be writing a sermon and thinking about Jesus, but I'm completely distracted by the fatness of this baby, the pleasantness of the shelf, and the skyping of my husband.

Shoes: an update

Matt now tells me that he 'can't believe I wrote a whole post about shoes', 'how utterly foolish' he says. To which I retort, if for one moment I stopped struggling with the shoe situation he would notice there was a grave problem and would no longer utter the words 'utterly foolish'.

So delighted am I with the suggestions of a shoe shelf that I am going to spend a portion of today appropriating a misused shelf for that purpose. We already have children's coats hung very low in the hallway and a shelf will fit nicely and neatly next to them. Now, if I could just get Matt to wildly start moving beds around....

I so enjoy these little reorganization projects.

Shoes

Instead of weeping and moaning about the health care vote last night (but believe me, I am weeping and moaning) I thought I would ask for some advice.

We've managed to get our laundry under control (I can't find the link--we moved all the kids dressers into the laundry room thereby simplifying everything) and our chore system means that the house is basically always reasonably picked up. However, I have no good, rational and decent way to deal with shoes.

I've tried keeping them lined up neatly in rows in various parts of the house, I've tried keeping them all in a huge basket, and now I'm making the kids constantly carry them up to their rooms every time I see a pair lying around. There always seems to be one critical shoe missing, and often I can't find my own shoes because Gladys has worn them to some remote part of the house.

So, surely some of you have something to suggest.
My only stipulation is that I can't spend any money. I can't go out and buy a fancy shoe rack or shoe bin or shoe storage unit or new room of my house for shoes (like the unbelievably blessed woman who has a whole barn for all her children's shoes). Whatever solution, it is will have to be completely free, although I'm willing to put in work to make it happen.

Please, I beg you, someone offer me some hope.

Monday Morning Fog

After being all discouraged about cleaning, turns out I was really coming down with a cold-a big walloping, life wrecking cold, one so awful I missed going to a Catechesis training day, missed everything else I could have done by not going, missed my own mind, really, and ended up even taking cold medicine (after having had to sign my name in a special book and showing my ID).

I'm still in a relative stupor.
BUT I'm starting school tomorrow, cold or no cold, and very excited about it. So are the children, surprisingly. I was gratified to find them shocked by the children in Sunday School who don't like school.
'Why?' they were incredulous.
'Because its boring' said the other kid.
'Why?' they wanted to know.
'I don't know, it just is' said the other kid.

I've rearranged the school room again, and I'm probably going to rearrange the living room again. And more stuff is going in the basement, anything that doesn't have a place. I'm so thankful that Christmas is over. We NEED and long for a routine.

So on that Note

and because its nearly supper time and all the children are getting tetchy and Matt choose This moment to go on a walk, I thought I would blog about
um
let's see
um
is there anything worth blogging about? Because really, all I've been doing for the last week is cleaning and then cleaning again and then cleaning, all the time trying to declutter and refunction the house.

I used to be really clean. I didn't have too much stuff. I wasn't married to Matt. I couldn't think when my bed wasn't made and things weren't in place. I thought of myself as a together and functioning person.

Now I still can't think when my bed isn't made and things aren't in place but I have to do it anyway.

So that's all I've been doing. I want to start school again on Monday and so I'm trying to get order back into the innards of the house. Pretty boring.

Jesus and maybe Santa are Coming: Get Ready

In light of this, and the fact that we have now reached a moment where the clutter, crumbs, toys and laundry have become too much, my children are carrying ALL THEIR TOYS, except two each, down and we're packing them away until after Christmas.

It has come to the point where all we do is clean. We wake up and clean, clean all morning, eat lunch and keep cleaning, clean well into the evening. And its not fun any more. So, extreme as it is, we're putting as many of our worldly belongings into the basement as we can fit there, and then maybe there'll be room for a Christmas tree.

OR, the baby could look like this

(Picture taken by my mother in Grand Place, Brussels. Notice the cigarette, amongst other things, like the size of the baby.)

Good Sized Baby Daily Getting Larger

Baby flipped to head down, as ultrasound verified yesterday. Relieved and basically very uncomfortable. So, still waiting and the temperature has gone back up to 80, of all things. Really long to go into confinement. Think it would be better for everyone. Instead of have cleaned Matt's closet, made an apple spice cake, cauliflower soup and read some more of Uncle Fred in the Springtime (that was yesterday). Today I'm going to pay all my bills, make bread and reorganize my spice and baking situation. Basically too hot to think about anything else interesting. Have begun to worry that baby will have bright red hair.