by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Step one: Decide you want to tidy up downstairs.
Step two: Put everything that belongs downstairs in its place.
Step three: Put everything that belongs upstairs on the side of the stairs.
Step four: Leave everything that belongs upstairs on the side of the stairs for several days.
Step five: Watch everything that belongs upstairs, left on the side of the stairs for several days, slowly make its way back into its former doesn’t-belong-here space downstairs (because 2-year-old twins don’t know the meaning of “Please leave that alone.”).
This counts as cleaning, right?
Well, that’s what a certain man in the house thinks. The same man who will tediously sort toys to make sure they go in their proper bins but can’t be bothered to carry the pile of junk back upstairs where it can find its proper place. Is it because the king-of-making-one-trip thinks it can’t be done in one trip and so doesn’t want to try? Is it because after tidying all the crap six boys, or at least the five ones walking, can spread out across a bottom floor he’s just too spent to walk up the stairs?
Maybe we’ll never know.
What I do know is that keeping 2-year-olds out of that minefield of fun stacked on stairs is worth the effort of making six trips up and down the stairs (because that’s how many it’ll take me, the not-even-close-to-queen-of-one-trip).
At least I’m getting some exercise these days after having a baby.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Why, yes. We do still have a Christmas tree in our living room. Yes, we are that far behind.
But remember this baby?
This baby will be our excuse for a while, because he’s so dang cute. We can’t put him down. We can’t stop kissing those kissy lips. I know, I know, he was born at the end of January, and Christmas was over in December, but there was THAT point in pregnancy, and then there was all the preparation for a new baby, and, well, we just ran out of time.
If it really bothers you that much, come help us take it down.
Otherwise, we’ll just all pretend it’s a Valentine’s Day tree. Good enough for me.
(Also, this isn’t all that bad. One year our Christmas tree stayed up until April. I wonder if we’ll break that record this year…)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
What can I say? Yes, our bedroom dresser is piled with diapers and burp cloths and trash and school papers. No, we haven’t unpacked the bags we took to the hospital. No, our bed hasn’t been made in several days.
WE JUST HAD A BABY. A really cute one, too.
See?
So all I really want to do is hold this sweet little boy. Cleaning and putting things away is overrated anyway. At least for the next 18 years.
(Just ignore that dead plant on the end of our dresser. You probably don’t want to know how many years it’s been sitting there, dead.)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
So I was stepping into my closet yesterday (which is worth a Messy Monday post all on its own…it’s quite treacherous right now), and I had to step over this. I did a double take, because my brain subconsciously screamed, “What is THAT?”
Moldy coffee is what that is. From one of my husband’s MANY coffee cups that get left in our bedroom, which is also our home office. Actually, let me correct that. This is not my husband’s coffee cup. It’s MY coffee cup, to be used only for hot tea. One we bought for ME on our 10-year anniversary trip to Disney World. He chose Mike Wazowski, I chose the Cheshire Cat. Why is it in here, growing coffee mold when I don’t drink coffee?
That’s a great question.
Well, I’ll let you guess who’s going to clean it.
Rachel is a writer, poet, editor and musician who is raising five (going on six) boys to love books and poetry and music and art and the wild outdoors—all the best bits of life. She shares her fiction and nonfiction writings over at her blog, and, when she’s not buried in a writing journal or a new song or a kid crisis at home, she enjoys reading Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner and the poetry of Rilke. Follow her on Twitter @racheltoalson.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
“They” say a person’s bedroom is like a hidden window into who they are, individually and as a couple. I sure hope that’s not true. Because these bags of trash have been sitting in our room since Christmas, and they are multiplying at an alarming rate. We’re not really trashy people. Honest. It’s just that after all the effort wasted picking up after boys all day sometimes we have a little trouble picking up after ourselves. And after the maddening task of wrestling boys into bed at night, sometimes we order in, just to make ourselves feel better about our lives. And after all that Christmas, well, I don’t even want to talk about it. Sure, it makes sleeping hard, knowing those bags of trash are staring at your back while you try to summon sleep. Sure, they sit beside you when you’re working and puff their smells right up your nose when you turn a certain way. Sure, they tell a story of who you don’t really want to be. But to tell you the truth, I’m just glad that trash is in bags now, because do you know where it used to be? All.over.this.room. So cut us some slack. At least we picked it up this time.
(P.S.: See that purple purse? And the white piece of paper hanging out from under it? That would be a paper airplane. I CANNOT GET AWAY FROM PAPER AIRPLANES. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! I THROW ONE AWAY AND THERE ARE THREE MORE IN ITS PLACE. SOMEONE SAVE ME BEFORE I’M BURIED ALIVE BY PAPER AIRPLANES!!!)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
This room should come with a warning. It should say, “Beware of the tiny little Lego pieces hiding in the fibers of the carpet.” It should say, “Those who enter should be wearing shoes.” It should say, “Enter at your own risk.”
Two days ago, the 8-year-old, who owns this room, said, “I’m going to clean up my room in an unconventional way. I’m going to put together all my Legos first, and then I’ll clean up everything else.” I encouraged this, of course, because it’s cleaning the room, so who am I to complain? Except when he started putting together those Lego Star Wars contraptions, he couldn’t find certain, necessary pieces.
I think we’ve all given up now. It’s a good thing this room has a door and I can close it and pretend it doesn’t really exist.
