Teaching Tidiness When You Are Not

Parenting ideas tend to fall into two categories: Those of parents currently in that stage who are often very enthusiastic about something new but (without realizing it, usually) have no idea of its long-term consequences or sustainability, and those of grandparents who have forgotten what really happened and also failed to account for changing times. So I would like to post something in the sweet spot where I can actually tell if something I did worked long-term *and* can still remember what I did. I am banking on this being an area where the times have changed little, we still don't have robots that will pick up after us. 

To begin with, I have (diagnosed) ADHD, (undiagnosed) probably some degree of dyspraxia, and it is just so. dang. hard. for me to do any cleaning that involves sorting, tidying, putting away. I literally cannot sort laundry into darks and lights. (The solution to this: Wash everything on cold. And if someone wants to buy purple pirate pants from a dubious online retailer, they can wear lavender socks for the next two years.) Also I cannot follow any regular sequence of activities that is more than, say, two items long. On the other hand, I can do the physical cleaning just fine if the stuff is out of my way, and I am capable of great feats under unpredictable bursts of inspiration.

So when the kids were small, there was no way I could implement any of the nice little things people do about having regular tidy-up times to teach children to keep their things in order. Attempting to do so would only lead to misery and no greater tidiness. I also had unpleasant memories of my mother, almost certainly also dealing with her own ADHD, alternating between heaps of chaos and massive projects accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth at our failure to measure up to The Right Way to Do Things.

I had to go with what I could do, intermittent bursts of cleaning and sorting, followed by a slow descent into chaos, but I figured we could at least ditch the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I made it my mission to make cleanup days (whenever they occurred) to be relatively pleasant experiences. I involved the kids to start with and they in the early part of the day had the pleasure of discovering many lost and forgotten items. If they wanted to put those items where they belonged, great. (We kept a few categories of toys in designated bins.)  I let them go when their attention or energy lagged as long as they were out of the way. 

Meanwhile, I started piling whatever was uninteresting to them. Given my difficulty with sorting, I usually focused on a very few functional categories: Clothes/blankets to be washed, books (esp. library books), obvious trash, and All That Other Stuff. There were usually one-two garbage bags of obvious trash. All That Other Stuff went into boxes or baskets that were then stored in the garage indefinitely. 

Anything that we couldn't manage to put away just went in the boxes or baskets in the garage. There was no shame or punishment attached--if you wanted to go dumpster diving in the baskets to find a lost item, you were always welcome to do so. I just knew that there was no way I would have the energy left at the end of the project to actually vacuum if I tried to sort. 

I tried to make things as simple as possible to maintain for those with the desire and ability to do so. For instance, some of the children still have just two locations for clothes: Clean basket and Dirty basket. (TBH, except for my work clothes, this is how I operate as well.) They all started doing their own laundry when they were tall enough to use the machines easily, so maybe 10ish. We never bought a ton of miscellaneous toys, usually just a few large collections that everybody played with (blocks, duplos->legos, dressup, little plastic dinos/knights/soldiers). And stuffies. So many stuffies.  Over the years, when a toy category had clearly been outgrown and everyone was ready to part with it, we passed it on. I never made them give up something they wanted to keep. 

Anyway, at the end of cleanup day there was a nice, empty, freshly vacuumed space which--guess what?--*immediately* inspired a massive burst of creative play that turned it into a mess again. But with all the trash and most of the miscellaneous small items out, the mess was much less perilous to the feet for quite a while. And I made a point of never bewailing this, but rather treating it as the natural reward of the labor of cleaning--having an open canvas to begin again.

These days probably occurred about quarterly during good times and maybe as far apart as annually when times were tougher. We also moved a fair bit during the earliest years and of course that provided a natural opportunity to do this. 

Over the last seven years, I gradually did this less and less with the kids and finally stopped altogether. There wasn't a particular set point for this, mostly I was just too tired to do anything not immediately necessary. If a child ever *wanted* to do something in their room and requested my help, I did everything I could to provide my assistance. So over the last seven years they gradually took over doing it themselves, when it mattered to them. This also coincided with getting rid of nearly all the toys as they outgrew them, except some showpiece legos and of course books will be always with us. 

The end result with them now ages 15-19: they all maintain their own rooms at a level of neatness somewhere between functional but sanitary clutter and showpiece tidiness with zero requirements or involvement from me. (I continued helping Dame for much longer than the others because her combination of ADHD and chronic pain/fatigue made it particularly difficult. However, this week she decided to do it and made it through the whole thing herself, over a couple of days.) They wash laundry with sufficient regularity. Rooms do not stink. 

Mostly up until recently we have not allowed eating in bedrooms which prevents the worst nastiness. However, Deux's extended and intense migraines have made it necessary for him and it is gradually slackening elsewhere. I can always tell when I get home from work whether Deux's migraine has ended by the stack of bowls in the sink. (I use large glass mixing bowls for his meals so that I don't need to bring him seconds.) Having lived with many other adolescent and post-adolescent males in my life, I know the habit of returning dishes to the kitchen is not one to be taken for granted. 

Anyway, I had a lot of misgivings when they were young about my approach so this is, at least, a letter to my younger self: Hey! It worked! And perhaps it might have some helpful ideas for someone with small children coping with similar issues. 

That Kind of a Day

We have one very complicated case going right now that involves coordinating things with several different groups. I had promised someone a drafted document to see if they could sign off on it by ten in the morning.

Naturally, this was the time my brand-new (refurbished) computer that I had just gotten everything set up and downloaded onto went on strike and started freezing up every few words or clicks or attempts to download. 

I did finally manage to get my document off by eleven, and meanwhile had contacted our tech guy, who decided the best course would be to just send his closest available person to bring a different tower for me to try out. The closest available person happened to be his girlfriend, who has tried to tell him that she should not be given technical tasks. But it was simple, right? Just swapping out the tower and pressing start.

Except the wireless had to be connected, and somehow when she pushed the buttons that were supposed to connect the computer with the router, instead what happened was our entire internet went down. So now I couldn't even work on someone else's computer, and neither could anyone else. For awhile we didn't even have phones.

A more technical tech person was dispatched, our internet was eventually restored, and I had my second new computer allllmost set up just in time to leave to get the kids. 

That let me start in on my second exercise in futility of the day, which was trying to patch the fence so the puppy could not get out. This issue dates back to last spring, when it turned out Panther, the puppy we got last year, went into heat so young we didn't have her fixed yet.

Natural selection favors dogs who can dig under fences. Judging from the variety of color and fur in the litter, maybe a few of them. So in June we had a litter of eight puppies--puppy midwife was not a skill I had planned for, but personal experience with mammalian reproduction let me roll it at a +3, and everything went well. Although in the throes of nursing difficulties, DOB and I vowed to each other that we would not, under any circumstances, keep one of the puppies.

You know what happened then. One of the homes we had lined up fell through and it just happened to be the home for the puppy who most adored Duchess and whose affection was requited. And reflecting that crushes on puppies seemed a safe outlet, we caved.

Unfortunately, Mammoth takes after his father in the fence-evading department. The past several months have been an endless round of filling in holes only to have them dug out again, like a slow-motion game of fetch. Last weekend we dealt with a particularly warped section of wire fence by barricading it with a giant section of wooden fence. We went in, certain he would have trouble getting through that, only to see him out again the next day. A little investigation revealed that he still had enough room to simply slide through his old hole and behind the wooden fence section. 

I tried placing a second section of wire fencing, partly buried, right behind the first one where the big gap was. That seemed to hold well, enough that he had to trouble himself to dig a new hole.

Which leads us to the current project, which is that someone told me that chicken wire lying on the ground next to the fence and covered with an inch or so of dirt would catch in his claws and deter further digging. I happened to have enough lying around left from a previous owner to cover the current favored spots. So we'll see how well it works. 

After that I took a long, hot bath and ate cookies. 

The Choring Curve

The thing about chores is, they are chores.

There is no system that will get around this. You can put purple stickers and happy unicorn balloons all over it and yet there is that nasty compost bucket still waiting to be taken out.

One does need a system, of course, but eventually the system grows old or wearisome. The choreishness comes uppermost. Then it's time for a new system.

It won't work forever. It won't get rid of the choreishness of chores. But it will help.

Chore systems work on the following curve:

Week 1: Enthusiasm for shiny new system. Considerable cooperation and only minor amounts of griping.
Week 2: Shine comes off. Griping begins.
Week 3-4: Agony. Chores are horrid and everyone wants to quit. Mother's will is still firm, though, hopefully, allowing things to proceed to:
Weeks 5-28: Routine. Chores get done, system works OK.
Weeks 28-end: Fraying. Chore system gets increasingly shrugged aside, fragmented, or just not followed. Mother gets distracted and cranky. Children are mysteriously nowhere to be found.

I used to have this feeling that if only one were truly virtuous and consistent, one would never need a shiny new system, one could just follow through on the same one, world without end, amen. But I think this was an error. Everything has seasons, ebb and flow, novelty within familiarity.

And now is the time of the new chore season. I relieved the kids of doing the hauling things outside chores (which they detest during winter, whereas I love the chance to go outside in any weather) and distributed more dish handling among them, which I could happily do less of. Today is the first day of shiny new system, and Duchess did a fabulous job on the breakfast dishes while I enjoyed my breakfast and Facebook.

The shine will come off. But it was nice today.

Bad Housekeeping Seal of Approval

Good mothers teach their children to pick up after themselves right from the first. If a child can get out toys, they can certainly put them away. All you need is a place for everything and everything in its place. I once had a lady very seriously lecture me on these principles, back when I was pregnant with the twins, while she was doing the dishes because I could not move without vomiting. Since I also couldn't really speak without vomiting, I didn't try to point out the obvious flaws in her plan.

Anyway, we got a little behind. A lot behind. The place kept moving and the everything kept changing. (Who are these people who can actually design enough places to contain what their kids have? Do their kids not create an entire new fleet of paper airplanes, the frontispiece of three unwritten novels, and seven maps of paradise for miniature plastic horses every time they have twenty minutes of free time? Then there are those who say, "Oh, I can't think in a mess; it really stresses me out, that's why I keep things cleaned up all the time." Well, I also can't think in a mess. That's why it's still there.)

But I've always figured that the least I could do is not make us feel bad about the mess. After all, it's not the ducklings' fault that they don't have proper places to put stuff and I haven't taught them to pick up every day. And it's not my fault that I operate at a preschool level in sorting ability or have moved eight times and lost everything all over again. So when--about once a quarter--it comes time to actually face up to the mess, at least we pitch into it with a right good will. They actually get excited. No doubt we will uncover some lost treasures. There'll be open space for a day or two to get things out in.

I let them pick things up for as long as they stay interested. Then, when they drift away, I start salvaging anything that we will desperately miss. (Library books and clothes, mostly.) I throw away anything I am reasonably sure they won't scream if they find out. I put away anything really obvious that they missed. This process has already taken most of the day and we probably have slighted lunch and I am getting very crabby.

And then--here is my Bad Housekeeping Secret--I get a big box. Or two. Or three. An extra laundry basket sometimes, but the holes are a problem. And I just scoop up everything that's left, put it in the box, and shove it down in the basement (or, now, the garage). No, I do not sort it into Things to Keep and Things to Give Away and Things to Put Away Somewhere Else, because at this point in the project if I try to start sorting I will have to be committed as a danger to myself and others.

For several years I have been telling myself that I will get to these boxes and sort them out afterwards, in a calmer moment, if I can only wrap up the cleaning project and vacuum today. We do filch stuff out of them from time to time--large items of dress-up tend to stick out and every once in a dreadful while a library book misses the initial scrutiny. If I pull a few larger items (firemen hats take up a lot of space) out I can usually consolidate the boxes and keep them in manageable numbers. But they begin to accumulate. I think we're close on to a dozen now.

Some might argue that this proves that these items are of no importance and we could get rid of them. They would be wrong. I know there are all kinds of things in these boxes that *are* of importance and we very much want, like the glass gems we use for tracking life in Magic: The Gathering and also teaching math, and all the pieces of all the puzzles, and three of the Clue murder weapons, and spare golf balls which are essential if you don't have time to get to the chiropractor, and enough writing implements to prevent us from ever needing to buy school supplies again. When we moved this spring I finally found one of these boxes from a previous move and there . . . THERE! . . . was the favorite purple coat I had been hunting for every winter since we moved in, hoping to find it for one of the twins. Unfortunately it was a 3T, so it was no longer any good. But had I found it sooner, it would have been, you see.

But retrieving these items would mean sorting them out from the twenty mixed decks of old playing cards, the plastic ball mazes and pencils that don't sharpen from Oriental Trading Company, and the other toddler snow boot that I finally gave up and threw away the mate to, and I keep waiting for that calm and relaxed day to come on which I feel up to such a herculean task.

I didn't really mean to tackle cleaning the kid zone this week. (One of the many wonderful things about this house is the kid zone is large enough that I can herd the mess upstairs and the living room stays fairly neat.) I was only skirting around the idea and getting ideas. The trouble is, we run on ideas. And so as soon as I had posed the question to the ducklings, "What could we do to make your rooms better?" they were all on fire to get started. And I'm not one to waste energy. So this week we put up shelves and moved dressers and drew lines and sorted through the fall clothes. And when we started running out of steam, I started filling up boxes again.

Over time, with children getting older, the mess has gotten better. I really do think our latest reorganization is going to help. And if it doesn't, I'm sure I can find a way to stack the boxes more carefully so the pile doesn't come over.

Coming up Dry

This was a busy week, what with DOB going to the Seattle doctor on Wednesday (which means me driving to Seattle in morning traffic, always a terrifying prospect for all concerned). We didn't get anything particularly earth-shattering out of that visit, except for genetic testing confirming that DOB does have the disease he's had his whole life, but it's just the garden variety and no particular reason for it to cause any other weird symptoms.

The afternoon before this trip, I dumped DOB's water bottle out in the sink and turned the tap on to refill it. Nothing came out. I tried all the other faucets. Nothing. I talked to all the neighbors, and found out all about their alternative water sources, which should come in handy if the power goes out. However, it was clear that the trouble was with our system.

Failing that, I called His Majesty and Toolboy. His Majesty seems to be in the process of handing off the mantle of He Who Knows How Things Should Be Fixed to Toolboy, but he brought over several buckets and bottles of water. Toolboy and Rocketboy showed up (with more water) and began doing mysterious things in the well house.

After several hours, Toolboy emerged with the verdict that though most of the above-ground component had needed to be and had been replaced, nothing was happening still and it was time to call the well drillers. Except it was 8 p.m., so it wasn't time to call them.

Really, it was just as well it happened this week, because we were gone most of the day for the doctor's and the ducklings were already slated to spend the night at Their Majesties, so B5 (who recently moved in) was the only one who had to face the whole day without water. We called the well drillers, but couldn't get anyone until the following day. Faced with the prospect of at least four extra buckets of water to haul to the upstairs toilet, not to mention trying to fix breakfast for the ravening hordes while helping DOB look presentable for court, I begged and Their Majesties kindly conceded to keep the ducklings an extra night.

So by the time the ducklings returned in the morning, the big truck was here and the well was being cleaned out of nasty sludginess and the pump replaced. It was still nearly noon before the water came back on, and the one remaining above-ground component that Toolboy didn't already replace will have to be replaced within two months. And it turns out that one of the 1,567 things to be done immediately upon moving in that we forgot to do was add the well rider to the home warranty policy. Still, at least the well is shallow so it cost much less than it might have.

And, for the first time since moving in, we have actual water pressure: showers rather than dribbles, and the ability to run two appliances and flush all at the same time. So, all's well that ends well.

In Which I Face My Fears

Although our new house has many wonderful advantages, it has two main drawbacks. One, of course, is the size of the mortgage payment.

The other one is the yard.

We have always lived in places with very small yards, and back when the big kids were babes in arms whom I could not safely leave unsupervised while I turned on a slathering beast of a gasoline-powered mower (something I never got the hang of), I got a little push mower which never needed the gas refilled nor had difficulty starting. It made a pleasant soft clattering noise and didn't smell at all and I could use it in perfect safety with infants playing close by. Indeed, as soon as they grew tall enough to hold up the handle, they could take a turn with it themselves.

Then we moved here. At some point a predecessor in title had looked at the lovely indigenous forest, which still stands in large swatches throughout the neighborhood, full of fir and cedar and huckleberry and salal and fern, all self-maintaining and some of it quite tasty, and decided they would rather see the sky occasionally.

So we have nearly an acre of mangy grass, dandelions, plantain and a few more sinister and prickly weeds. There's a small yard up front that is pretty much pure grass and easy to maintain. But the back is a steep and gravelly hill which takes better to weeds than grass. And there is an awful lot of it. One look at the size of it and I passed my beloved little push mower on to Wondergirl, who had just moved into a development with tiny, grassy yards.

That left us the problem of mowing. It was intended that we would eventually get one of Grandpa's lawn tractors, but of course that took time and arrangement and meanwhile the grass and weeds grew as grass does in the springtime and DOB sneezed as he does when the grass grows in the springtime. The neighbor took pity on us and mowed it once and some people from church did it another time, and B5 started to mow once after we got Grandpa's mower delivered, but then it broke down and took some time to get it fixed. And then DOB's father was out and he mowed it while they were here.

Eventually, though, the mower was fixed and no one else was around there really wasn't any good reason why I, myself, should not do the mowing instead of begging it done elsewhere. Except that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to run the thing. Not that I had never done it before--Grandpa taught both Toolboy and I to run the tractor as soon as our legs were long enough. But that was a long time ago, and I have a natural antipathy to machinery as strong as Toolboy's natural affinity for it. (It's not a gender expectations thing; I was just as terrified of Grandma's sewing machine.)

I debated calling up someone for instructions, but it was embarrassing and I am terrible at following instructions anyway. I turned to Google instead and found a page entitled, "How To Start a Riding Lawn Mower." Those instructions didn't make sense, but I printed them out and took them with me to the mower. I was unable to identify any of the parts I was supposed to do things to except the brake and the key, but I put my foot on the brake and turned the key several times and much to my wonder, the thing started.

Indeed, it was very excited to start and began tearing around the yard at an alarming speed, belching fumes. After a while I began to get the hang of it, and then I noticed that it wasn't actually cutting anything. More experiments with everything that could be prodded in one direction or another and I found the lever that turned on the blade. I was actually mowing! And after a while I discovered where to move something else so that I could move at a reasonable pace. Indeed, the only thing I never did figure out was how to work the parking brake, but that was only a problem once when I ran out of gas on the uphill slope. And it didn't make it all the way to the pond, so no harm done.

Thus I tamed the mighty beast and conquered the lawn and felt very proud of myself. I'd still much rather have woods, but unfortunately letting it return to woods on its own would mean putting up with twenty years of blackberries and scotch broom first.

A Day in the Life at our New and Improved Home

7 a.m. DOB's alarm has gone off. We procrastinate getting up for a bit. (OK, the house has done nothing to make alarms more pleasant or procrastinating less pleasant.)

7:30 a.m. I go for a brisk walk down quiet country roads while DOB gets ready for the day all by himself. (More or less. It will be even better once we can get the motorized wheelchair running. It's not an electric chair. I keep forgetting that.)

8 a.m. I prepare breakfast. DOB is clear at one end of the house, finishing getting ready to go. The children are all upstairs, nearly out of earshot, happily absorbed in a massive train spread which is now encompassing the entire playroom because they don't have to pick it up every night. They have also gotten dressed, with no fighting over the precise sequence and location, since everyone can just get dressed in their own room whenever they want.

8:30 a.m. The children finish up eating breakfast at the counter while I see DOB off. (Still waiting on a few adaptations to streamline that, especially getting the doorknobs replaced and keyed to a single key, so that it is possible to get into the garage from the ramp without someone opening the door in advance.)

9 a.m. I sit down to eat breakfast and check Facebook in peace in the dining room while the children start in on their schoolwork in the schoolroom. I start the laundry. (OK, this is not improved by the new house. It's a long way from the bedrooms to the laundry room, and today a massive city stands in the way.)

9:30 a.m. We have our group time in the schoolroom (memory work, singing, poetry, Spanish). All our school materials have been left out on the table, so we don't have to get anything out. It's sloppy but it's faster and we can close the door when I don't want to see it.

10 a.m. The twins run off to play while I read history to the big kids and then we do math. I can write it all over the board without messing up my to-do list, because I wrote that one on a different white board, in the kitchen.

10:30 a.m. We stop for snack, Bible story (Moses striking the rock, the Rock played by Dot with rather more lines than Rocks usually get) and laundry. Then we take a walk down some more pleasant country roads during a break in the rain.

11 a.m. The big kids curl up in my chair to do their independent reading, The Landing of the Pilgrims today. (This is a special privilege for cooperative reading.) I go upstairs, out of earshot, with the twins to read them a story about birds. When I come back down, the big kids are drawing comic strips of their story. I help Deux finish up his map study and we pick out a science experiment to do later in the afternoon, as it requires some prep time.

11:30 a.m. The kids return to their massive train city and I putz around the schoolroom getting ready for tomorrow while lunch heats up.

12 p.m. The kids eat lunch at the kitchen counter while I read The Peterkin Papers to them. The mess stays in the kitchen and does not get entangled with dropped school papers.

12:30 p.m. I eat my lunch at the kitchen counter while reading; Duchess and Deux have commandeered my computer to write a play. They are in a different room and don't bump into me once. When everyone is done we do our science experiment, which can be done without clearing away the other schoolwork.

1 p.m. The kids have their computer game time. I tidy the house without tripping over them and then sit down in my nice, comfy, far-away-from-other-bodies chair and read intelligent books.

2 p.m. I send the kids out to play and take the computer back to catch up on billing and correspondence.

3:30p.m. Toolboy and B5 come over to fix the electric chair motorized wheelchair. Everybody gets a snack. I make some experimental breakfast cookies for DOB to take to the gym. I leave them out to cool without getting in the way of fixing supper. Kids do chores. (The new house has not improved doing chores.)

4 p.m. The neighbor boy shows up, and after he admires the massive train city and the catapults in the backyard everyone settles down to reading Garfield in the living room. I start a supper of lentils and rice. (The menu may or may not be inspired by the shiny new mortgage payment.)

5 p.m. I finish folding the children's laundry and they put it away and return to the train city. I sit down to rest while supper simmers. Even though it has been pouring rain nearly all day, I do not feel like I am going to lose my mind.

6:30 p.m. I realize DOB is going to be late and have the children go ahead and eat supper. Afterward, they go back upstairs to play. I do not go crazy.

7 p.m. DOB arrives home and I don't even notice because he comes all the way inside by himself on the shiny newly-running electric chair motorized wheelchair.

7:30p.m. The girls do the dishes while I take DOB his supper and hang out in the alcove. The children are somewhere far away. And quiet. Playing with trains.

8:30 p.m. We have good night hugs and prayers. The kids have been reading and I graciously permit them to keep reading for another half-hour.

Actual Pictures!

Not *too* tidied up, because then you would not ever see them. And not of everywhere, because some places are not even tidyable enough for this. (The master bedroom still needs drywall, and texture, and paint, and . . . ) And there is still a great lack of Things On The Wall and color in genera. But there's enough to get the idea.
 

Kid desk area in the playroom

Girls' Bedroom. They have, unfairly, more pillows than anyone else.

Playroom. Still needs more bookshelves.

Boys' Bedroom. The most presentable angle.

Living/dining room. (A child is in MY chair!)

Back entry and piano. This is right opposite the kitchen.

Kitchen. Even messy it's still pretty roomy.

Schoolroom. It's honey, not cantaloupe

Backyard. This is the view from the kitchen window. There's a pond down there, with a rowboat and ducks.

Back deck and ramp. So far DOB has not driven off the edge, but it would be nice to get the rail up.

Color Me Incompetent

I come from a line of women who can decorate. You know, the kind of people who can take a room and make it look like everything is supposed to be there, instead of like some random furniture was taking a walk and paused to catch their breath. The kind of people who can make colors who weren't on speaking terms sit down to tea together. And take eclectic and turn it into a style.

I wouldn't say I completely missed out on this talent. At least I got enough to be discontent when the walls are plain white. But somehow things never come out on the walls they way they do in my head. When I put a bunch of mismatched furniture together, it doesn't look "eclectic," it looks "bunch of mismatched furniture." When I put colors together, instead of reinforcing and highlighting, they just glare sullenly at each other.

But hope springs eternal and every house is a new chance. I wasn't going to paint anything at the new house just yet, as the walls are in good shape and resources need to be devoted to the flooring and door widths, but then I realized that the room that is ideal for the schoolroom is also painted powder blue. While I can tolerate plain white with sufficient stuff on the walls, powder blue I cannot tolerate anywhere for any length of time. So I'm going to try again, and see if this time I can get a color on the walls that doesn't turn into something else as soon as I get it up there.

I try reading books about color design, but they all start out with the first-grade color wheel, and then they start talking about how colors next to the main color can coordinate, or colors on the opposite side, and then my eyes glaze over when they start talking about hue and saturation and I go away with the impression that you can put together pretty much anything and it will look great in a decorating book and terrible in my living room.

One thing I haven't actually tried yet that I do have some hope in: I'm going to try matching my paint chips to the curtains and pictures I already like. It doesn't require me to read about hue and saturation, for one thing.

Home Improvement

One of the joys of selling a house is finally being required to do all that stuff you vowed you'd do to the house when you moved in.

This is the first time we have moved straight from one house to another, so there is also all the stuff to be dealt with before moving in: quite a bit in this case, because of the need to make the entrance and master bedroom and bathroom wheelchair accessible, at a minimum. There are a lot of other things that would be nice to do, but can wait, like putting a full bath in the master bedroom or repainting the hideous 80s dark wood flat-front cabinets. 

DOB proposed that we divide and conquer--I would handle the old house (a few random handyman projects that I could either do or be here when kind friends and relations came to help with) and he would handle the new house (getting bids, making lots of decisions, and hunting up funds). It was a logical system, but the lines invariably blur somewhat.

I am not handy. This is not a gender thing, it's a complete physical ineptitude thing. Still, I want to do my part, besides just calling people up and fixing sandwiches.  For the most part, I stuck to demolition. I managed to rip out the old wallboard in the basement stairwell without poking through into the laundry room or breaking my leg on the stairs, so that was an accomplishment. Also it involved burying two rats that had drowned in one of the garbage cans.

Two more big-ticket projects were replacing a broken window and painting under the eaves. Fortunately a friend suggested I check out the Habitat for Humanity store and there was, amazingly enough, a window that almost exactly fit in our very strangely-sized window slot for a third of the price of the special order from the hardware store. Also cheap paint in a color that didn't match, but no color would have matched. The color of our house is unique in human history. So it all came out much cheaper, which always makes me happy.

For a few brief moments I felt the glow of handiness and visions of improvements on the new house, planned and undertaken solely by me, danced in my head.

Then I returned to earth, where the children had reorganized the house, there was nothing to eat, and I was so exhausted I wanted to spend the entire next week in bed. I may decide that 80s dark wood cabinets are just fine.

Push! Push!

When I was in labor with Duchess, and had been pushing for an hour or so, I got rather tired of the whole process (no wonder, I'd been at it for three days!) I finally begged the doctor, "Can't we *please* make it stop for a while?"

She just said, "You're not going to feel any better until you get this baby out." And I got back to work.

Looking back to 2009, I can see that selling a house *always* reminds me of labor. I can't believe, looking back to 2009, that we did weeks of showings with four preschoolers. I am deeply grateful that we only needed one this time. And that we found a house to move to so quickly.

Two weeks from first talking to our agent we had a contract to sell and a contract to buy. The new house will be closer to the freeway, has a master suite at one end of the house, an open floor plan for the main living area, and a two-bedroom, one bath, big playroom kid zone upstairs over the garage. It's twice the size and twice the yard of this house (and twice the price, but what does one expect?)

Even everything going smoothly is almost too much. For months now, we've been just barely surviving. But there was no way to make things better without moving. And there is no way for moving to be completely stress-free. So, nothing to do but push and keep pushing. And hope it really does make things better.

Because nothing can fix everything. Not walking is still not walking, and it's still a completely different world than not walking very much. Right now, we just are hoping for a place where we can sometimes think about something else.

Cabin Fever

I've been building a playlist of winter-themed songs to vary the diet of Christmas music. There are quite a few wintry songs on the theme of "I've got my love to keep me warm." There are, if anything, more on the theme of, "I'm cold now that my love has left me." But there don't seem to be any on the theme--which I would most identify with--of, "My love and I made a lot of babies and I think they're going to tear the furniture apart before spring."

It really hasn't even yet been a bad winter for being stuck inside. No one has been noticeably sick so far (we'll see how long THAT lasts)--we even managed to forestall a sinus infection for DOB by the hasty application of all the remedies we learned last winter. We had a week and a half of deep cold, in which we went down to the walk-through Life of Jesus at the neighborhood church and skated on the Sea of Galilee. Now it's back to 40s and drizzly which, although uninspiring, is really not that bad for getting outside. It was a matter of great disappointment that we didn't manage some snow at the intersection of those two weather patterns.

But darkness still comes way too soon and the children who used to be cute little toddlers bouncing on the couch are now posing a serious danger to the springs. I guess I should have put a stop to it sooner.

While we were wandering through the walk-through we got invited to come take a turn being Jesus Blessing the Little Children. Duchess naturally jumped at the opportunity, and everyone else naturally followed Duchess. I figured anything that would get us outside after dark was a worthy endeavor.

Dear Grandchildren,

I'm not saving stuff for you.

Maybe by the time you come along we will have progressed to the point where all toys are holographic projections and cleanup consists of hitting the off switch. (Wow. THAT is a fantasy.)

Or maybe we will have regressed to the point where all you have to play with is sticks and dirt. (Oh, wait, that's what your parents are playing with.)

Or maybe things will be pretty much the same, in which case, there will be yard sales.

Or maybe your parents will stay true to their preadolescent forswearing of reproduction. In which case, they won't be your parents.

Whatever it is, we can get along without me saving things.

I didn't actually get rid of the blocks yet. Those inch cubes are pretty handy for teaching volume, so I can justify them through at least third grade.

By the time you come along, the colors that looks so cute now will be ghastly. The toys that are educational will be passe. The river will move on.

I may as well let it sweep some of this stuff away with it. Let somebody else enjoy it before it expires completely.

Of course, nobody will let me get rid of the Duplos yet, even though they have long since officially graduated to Legos. 

Or just let it go to the landfill. My time is not worth sorting out the cards from dollar store games of Old Maid, from cardboard puzzles that are warped and missing half their pieces. Some things even the poor don't want. And I need the space.

You want your grandmother to reach her old age with her sanity intact, don't you?

So . . . don't complain. When you come along, maybe we'll go to the park. Or the library, where they have librarians to make sure the pieces go back with the right puzzles. Or switch on the toybox holograph.

I may have to hang on to the elf hat. Your daddy was just too stinkin' cute in it. And it doesn't take up space. Much.

It's That Time

It is August. Children eat popsicles and contemplate the start of school. Geese contemplate the trip south. Leaves contemplate turning yellow. I contemplate cleaning up this horrible mess before I go completely insane and take it all outside and light a match to it.

Which would be bad, because there's a burn ban on.

Back in the olden days, I think I would have been a tolerably good housekeeper. I like menial labor--it gives the mind lots of time to work while keeping the hands busy. Scrubbing, sweeping, dusting--all nice, soothing activities.

However, modern surfaces need little cleaning and modern cleaning supplies take little effort. The test of a good housekeeper nowadays is not her willingness to put in a little elbow grease, but her ability to remain calm and organized and decisive in the face of the unrelenting onslaught of STUFF.

At that, I am a miserable failure. I am not calm in the face of STUFF. STUFF terrifies me. STUFF steps on my toes and shoves me into the wall and tweaks my ear and makes me cry. I hate STUFF.

And I can't organize. Not anything I have to touch. I can organize ideas beautifully. Can take a directory of ten thousand random documents and turn them into coherent narrative for trial. Can take an incoherent jumble of thoughts and turn them into a clear and eloquent pleading. But as soon as my hands get called on to do anything but type, it's hopeless. I'm at a preschool level. I can't even sort laundry and match socks without getting hopelessly muddled. (Sadly, this is not an exaggeration for the sake of the blog--it's the unvarnished truth.)

If it were just me, I could keep up, most of the time, because I also avoid acquiring stuff. But I have children, and children are to STUFF as socks are to burrs in an August meadow. It follows them home. It coalesces around them. Nice, organized valuable belongings melt into STUFF just from their presence. I was, of course, supposed to teach them "A Place for Everything And Everything In Its Place" back when they were two, but I was kind of busy trying to keep them alive back then, plus I couldn't remember the Places, plus the Everything kept changing.

So here we are, and once again, the STUFF has taken over their room and spilled over into the living room. We spent all morning at it and they, with a promise of extra computer time, worked as well as could be expected, and we took out bag after bag of garbage and basket after basket of toys to go in the basement to be sorted later. Blood, sweat and tears all put in an appearance. We did all this a couple of months ago and it's worse than ever. It just  . . . grows.

It is a problem that they have no space for their own things, except piled on top of their beds (which makes for uncomfortable sleeping and absolutely miserable emergency sheet changes). So in addition to the load to Goodwill and the library, we stopped and bought four identical underbed containers and labeled them. It might help for a little bit.

But I know the STUFF will be back.

The State of Things

It's been a bit crazy, though at least no one has had the flu.

We instituted dire threats (my purse is full of socks and rubber bands) and they are doing better at keeping hands out of mouths. We'll see how long it works.

DOB's feet continue poorly, rapidly followed by the rest of him, and he is now waiting on the insurance company to approve and the doohickey companies to make braces and a shiny new wheelchair so that he can get around again under his own power and hopefully build strength back.

In the meantime, to keep the case load from completely exploding, I've been spending more time at his office. I'm trying to get case management software set up and do random miscellaneous research and drafting projects of the variety that he hates and I love. It works out fairly well, although perhaps I should stop trying to Keep School On Schedule at the same time. Still, it's something we'd like to make work long-term, so maybe I shouldn't.

We finished sorting through the books and now have all the books we want to keep on the shelves. It is a very happy thing. Until we get more books.

The children are planning to go to a church carnival tonight and have, as usual, assembled their own costumes out of things they found in the basement. Someday I hope my children remember me for encouraging their initiative, creativity and independence. That is, I hope they don't remember me for never doing creative things for them.

And in related news (that is, news of relatives), Toolboy's recovery from stomach surgery is not going so well after all and he is flat on his back again until it finishes. Meanwhile, Toolbaby number two is due no later than Friday. Prayers for a rapid recovery and a very smooth delivery would be appreciated.

What I do with my summer vacation

Bookworm is somewhat at loose ends until college starts in the fall, so she offered to come over and help me with organizational things. I organize much better if there is another adult person in the house, ready to tell me, "Yes, throw it away!" (unlike the children who inevitably think of thirty new uses for it.) Also, Bookworm is an engineer, and therefore was able to figure out how to combine two old, odd-shaped bookcases into one bookcase the right shape for the space--and also how to stabilize it so it would not fall over. This involved using my hand saw and the end of  a board we found lying around and the edge of the porch and my foot. (I used my bad foot so if it got injured things would not be significantly worse.) So, now I have--at no extra cost--a school shelf that is actually deep enough to hold school-type materials, which makes me very, very happy.

In the meantime, the kids were busy with the pool, specifically with filling the entire pool with dirt, rocks, and bicycles.  They like to do that kind of thing.

The Organizer

I just put the scheduled last load of laundry in the dryer, made sure the planned chili beans were turned on to cook for supper, and reserved the library books for us to pick up next week for the following week of school. In a few minutes I'll set us all onto our list of afternoon chores.

I'm not sure I can handle this level of organization.

For most of the past, my approach to domestic duties has been:
1. Is there food to eat?
2. Is there anything clean to wear, should need arise?
3. Then go to bed, finally!

Over the last couple of years that stage has gradually faded, but with drastic life changes happening every six weeks or so, I've stayed entirely on the defensive. However, I now find myself with a house to run, children old enough to hire, and a lack of any dramatic life-changing events for over a month! It is time to try being organized.

I don't like reading about other people's organizational ideas. I find this advice usually written by two kinds of people:

1. People who are so naturally organized that they have absolutely nothing to say to those of more random inclinations. I remember reading one book prattling about the need for customizing your plan to suit you, "After all, some people think dusting needs to be done every day while others think once a week is sufficient." Um, yes. Or perhaps, once a year, right before putting up the Christmas decorations.

2. People who are somewhat random, but who have forgotten that the main reason they are so much more organized than they were ten years ago is that their children are ten years older than they were ten years ago. The laziest teenager has nothing on the mess-generating capacity of a toddler trying to be helpful.

Thus, people will assure you that if you just do a little bit every day, things will never get out of hand. This may be true for some people. It is not true if you have two three-year-olds. It's definitely not true if you have a tendency to say, "Oh sure, why not?" to children's ideas of what to do and only later realize that you have just officially endorsed the plan to paper the entire house with catalog cut-outs. A house with small children goes from neat to out-of-hand in three minutes flat.

And the trouble is, if I'm following a real housekeeping schedule and *trying*, I actually get annoyed by this. If I'm just waltzing along and cleaning when I feel like it, I don't really care that I never quite get all the way to neat. If I mop for an occasion, then the floor is mopped for that occasion and we can all stay out of the mud puddles until the occasion is over and then mud away. If I mop because it's Mopping Day, then I suddenly turn into a neat freak who wants to duct-tape the children to the ceiling where they won't touch anything.

Which is another reason why I don't follow other people's organizing advice. At least if I make up my own housekeeping schedule, I can have all the fun of designing a schedule. Planning is something I'm good at. Making beautiful charts. Lining everything up. It's innocent fun, and so what if I never follow it? Whereas if I followed someone else's plan, I'd miss out on the only fun part and move straight to feeling guilty.

There really is only one thing that's holding me to a schedule thus far, and that is that it's easier and more fair to get children to help if there's a definite plan for them versus Mother suffering from sporadic bouts of wailing and guilt-tripping, interspersed by letting them run wild.

After considering the different schools of thought on Children and Work and Money, we decided to come up with our own system that would make things as complicated as possible. So they have a baseline allowance that they get just for existing, and they also have jobs (mostly pertaining to meals) that they have to do if they want to continue to exist. Then they have jobs they can do for hire, if they want to make enough money to actually do anything with, things that add to the niceties of life like folded clothes and clean floors. But to keep these jobs available to be done, I have to make sure the prerequisites are in place--that there actually is clean laundry to fold in manageable quantities, and that we can locate precisely where we last left the floor. Which means sticking to the schedule.

Some are born organized, some achieve organization, and some have organization thrust upon them. When the children leave home, I'm going to sweep the floors when I *feel* like sweeping the floor, and not before!

And the Other Help

This afternoon D1 decided to reorganize the tote in which I dump hers and D2's clothes, folding and sorting with geometric precision and persuading D2 that there really was no better way to spend the afternoon. Watching this, I said, "D1, I think when you are ten I am going to hire you to run the house for me."

"How about when I am seven?" she asked.

"Well, you have to be old enough to use the stove by yourself."

"Maybe when I am nine?"

Labor Day

Conversation last night:

QOC: This is like the last month of pregnancy, where something might happen any minute but it hasn't happened yet, and you're exhausted and frustrated and sick of the whole thing. Except at least with pregnancy you know it's going to end soon.

DOB: That's not what you said July 6 last year. Hey, it must mean we're almost there!

QOC: I don't think there are house-selling hormones.

Then today, after scheduling three showings inside of two hours:

DOB: This is like labor: "How far apart are your showings?"

QOC: I can't do it anymore!

DOB: You can! You can! I see the head!

Showboat

We are now officially Tired of Showing This House.

We shrugged off sympathy initially, carried on as we were by the tidal force of enthusiasm for the new and exciting. Enthusiasm, however, either needs new fodder or adequate rest to continue it, and we have had neither. After one or two showings a day for the past two weeks, we're up to three showings today. Reputedly this flurry of activity is due to deadlines impending on the first-time home buyers' tax credit, which everyone hopes will be extended, but only after a lot of people have already signed contracts.

It's impossible to keep things looking in top condition forever. The fresh wax is scratching up and the paint on the doorways is awfully easy to chip. Its charms are fading, although I vow I really will mop it again today. Or maybe tomorrow.

So, first time home buyers, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

And let us get out of here. We've had enough of this stifling neatness.

Edited to add: Make that FOUR showings today, and I really did mop.