Dirty Little Secret

Okay, I lied.  It's not that little.  And for anyone who knows me at all, it's not a secret.

I am not a housekeeper.

No, let's be real here.  In the spirit of, you know, bold blogging and all.  I am a slob.

Don't judge me.  We can't all be perfect.  We all have our dirty little secrets.  Mine just happens to be, well, not so little.

In the background of many of my pictures, you have probably noticed toys lying around. This is not the type of thing I'm talking about, because, let's face it, who can keep their floors toy-free all the time?  It just isn't possible with kids.  It isn't.  And if you're trying to tell me otherwise, I assure you I'm standing here with my hands over my ears and humming.  I'm not listening!

This is not something that is new to me.  I was one of those kids with the bedroom that made my mom want to pull her hair out.  She earned every gray hair that she has.  And she has more of them than you realize.  It was awful.  I'd wonder how I lived that way, except I still do.  More clothing on the floors than in the drawers, and everything that was in the drawers was stuffed, not folded (which is probably why most of my clothes wouldn't fit into them).  Piles of...who knows what...on the floor of my closet.  Bags...blankets...toys...trash (especially tags off of new clothing, but do those really count?)...everywhere.  You get the picture.

So, of course, the worst thing I could hear from my mom was, "Go clean your room."  This translated to, "Go spend all day in your room picking one thing up and putting it somewhere else it doesn't fit until it's time to go to bed.  Or sneak and read a book, but don't let me catch you, or you'll be in big trouble."  On the rare occasions when I actually, successfully cleaned my room, within five minutes*, it would look like a tornado had struck it.

* Okay, I'm exaggerating.  It may have been as many as ten or fifteen.

These days, I have gotten a little bit better.  Living with someone else (and having company from time to time) can do that to you.  But we still have our problem areas.  Mostly, it's the out-of-the-way rooms with doors, where, during a last minute frantic cleaning session, we can toss all of the stuff that's in the way and make the main rooms look decent.  (Normal people would use a closet, but we have so much random junk that it takes entire rooms to contain it all.  This has gotten infinitely better since my brother-in-law put in an easier access door to our attic, but it's still an issue.)

It depends on where we're cleaning, but the worst rooms tend to be the "office" and...our bedroom.

Our bedroom?  Really?  Why?  I mean...shouldn't a bedroom be, well, peaceful?  Restful?  Clean?

Well, yes, of course.  But you know what else it is?  It's private.  When you have company, people don't usually go in it unless the door is open (which ours never is, to keep the cats off of Craig's pillow the bed).  So, when you have a room that's never seen right off of a room that's often used for company...it becomes a convenient dumping ground.  And you end up with something like this:

The bed hasn't been made in weeks (and I guarantee Craig was the last one to do it).  There is a random seat cushion leaning against the end of the bed.  And I'm not going to get into what is on the nightstands, but we don't currently have a trash can in our bedroom and we've both had colds recently, so you can probably imagine.  And then wish you hadn't.

Or this:

My favorite thing here is the baby seat in the middle of the room.  It's broken, by the way, and we haven't used it since...oh, November or December.  2008.  (But we're going to try to fix it.  Because it worked so well for the Imp, and...I can't stand to throw anything away.  Nooooo, really?)  There are also boxes of clothing that I'd put away at one time, but which migrated back out of the closet for some reason.  No, actually the little box has a good excuse - it's maternity stuff.  But the big box?  I have no idea why it's out.  And the white shirt on top of it?  Not even mine.  Or Craig's.  (It's my mom's, and she took it home with her today.)

Which reminds me to give her some HUGE credit, because without her help, our room would still look like that.  She came in today and made sure the kids didn't kill themselves or each other watched the kids upstairs while Craig and I worked downstairs.  Lifesaver.  An extra set of hands can make all the difference.  So, thank you, Mom.  Because I know you read this.

And I'm sorry about the gray hair comment.  Your hair looks very nice.

Or this:

I think this one is my personal favorite.  It shows very clearly my tendency to say, "Oh, I don't feel like hanging this up right now, but I'll come back and do it later."  And then months will pass, and by the time I admit to myself that I was lying when I said that, it will have mutated into something scary.  And eaten a rocking chair.  (Can you see it?  It's sandwiched between the wardrobe and the chest-o-drawers, which, incidentally, yes, I know do not match, but I love them both, so they both stay.)

I decided yesterday morning that I couldn't take it anymore, and I called Mom and asked her to come up.  She dropped everything at a moment's notice and drove an hour and a half to stay overnight with us and watch the kids while we tried to make our house a little bit more livable.  Amazingly enough, I think we succeeded.

The way a bed is supposed to look.  Made up, with fifty-million pillows at the head and a hand-made (by, you guessed it, my awesome mom) afghan at the foot.  The room isn't perfect.  There's still a random baseball glove on top of a book and a printed out e-mail on top of some sort of electronic device that I, um, don't think is ours underneath the nightstand.  And a random bottle of generic NyQuil on top of it, but I guess my husband left that there on purpose.  Two pictures on the floor, waiting to be hung on the wall.  And the photo collage above the bed is one photo short.  But it's so much better than it was before.

This angle shows that there really was a floor under all that junk!  A few minutes ago, I walked around my bed, and had to do a double-take when I realized I didn't have to step around boxes and baby seats anymore.  (Ignore the random Tigger pillow on top of our laundry basket.  Like I said, it's not perfect.)

And, look, oh my gosh, the clothes really did eat the chair!  Or, well, no.  We moved it upstairs so I'd have something in the Imp's room that I could sit in and get up out of, because his PBK Anywhere Chair just isn't working for me anymore.  Especially at 1 a.m. when I'm trying to get him to go back to sleep.  It's hard to get up out of something that's 1 foot off the ground without any hands even when you're not five-and-a-half months pregnant.

Please ignore the random bottle of...champagne?  I think.  Sitting beside the wardrobe.  I've had it for...um...wow.  Three years?  More?  It was a gift at work for a "job well done" (each person on the project got one) while I was pregnant with the Birdie...and I've never really gotten around to opening it, what with one baby after breastfeeding after another baby after breastfeeding after another.  Maybe I'll get to drink it.  Eventually.  Say, in another three years.  They are supposed to get better with age, right? Right?  Well, I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that glimpse into my not-so-perfect life.  Next week, I'll be posting a video of me trying to get up out of the Anywhere Chair while holding the Imp, his cup, his Larry the Cucumber, and a book.

Or, then again, maybe not.

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Edited:  Craig informed me, after reading this, that the electronic equipment under his nightstand does belong to us.  I was confusing it with something we borrowed several years ago, and apparently did give back.  Thank goodness.  I was really feeling guilty about that.