Conquering Laundry Mountain, the clutter and the chaos

My mission this weekend is to finally conquer laundry mountain, I've said it before and I'll say it again, i HATE laundry, it is time consuming and because I'm busy or scatter brained or a little bit of both it sometimes takes days to do a single load.  My husband gave me a few helpful suggestions try using the timer, set the alarm to go off, do a load a day, like that is really going to help if i can not remember to switch the laundry over an hour after putting it in i am definitely not going to remember that i set the timer to start the load after dinner, and well the alarm might work but unless it is a blow horn and can be wired to flash my ceiling lights red when it goes off i will probably just tune it out.

 Nope hunny if you want to help me out take your butt down to the laundry room switch over the laundry bring it upstairs, fold it and put it away.  Do not leave it in the laundry basket sitting in the living room where inevitably it is going to get dumped out and the basket used as a seat a make believe car, boat, train, or airplane, and is then just going to make an even bigger mess and take longer to clean up then it would have if it had just been folded and put away right away, OK I'm actually the worst culprit for this one but he does do it to.

 No this weekend i am determined to get the laundry done, sorted organized and put away, including finishing up the seasonal sorting that i started, though this year the weather changes so drastically that we have had all four seasons in just a few short weeks.  One of the biggest problems with the laundry is that my family just has far to many clothes, we would have a lot of clothes to begin with because we are a family of six but we really, really have to many clothes.  I can go for a few weeks and not do laundry because we have so many clothes, and there in lies the problem, all those clothes are driving me nuts, the laundry pile is large enough that i could lose a child in it and the clothes clutter is disheartening.

  I need to conquer the clothes so that i can then move on to conquering the rest of the clutter, my basement is at a stage where if the laundry was taken care of i could then move on to my crafting stuff and organizing the rest of the stuff that's down there, but i look at the donting task of getting through the laundry and then i look around at all of the other things i could be doing and well i get distracted away from laundry mountain by the little foothills that surround it.  I day dream about taking my family to a nudist colony to live, which for my boys would probably be heaven as they hate clothes, the tags the different material the constriction of them, my daughter would be devastated as then she could not play dress up and change her outfit a hundred times a day.   I have thought about throwing it all out and starting new but the cost alone would be crazy and my kids have some really cute clothes, though i do think that i am going to throw out all the socks and start fresh in the fall or maybe not at all really the only one that wears socks in our house is my husband and his get issued to him, OK the kids do have to wear socks to school but the minute they are home off come the socks and the mystery of the missing socks starts again, because we all know that they don't take them off and place them in the laundry basket nope one gets taken off here one there one ends up under the couch, the dryer monster eats them, socks really are just a nuisance and were just invented to drive me crazy in the mornings when i am already rushed and trying to get kids out the door and then i am searching high and low for a pair of socks that match, nope from now on they are all getting black socks, the same size, and style there that solves that problem, no more pink, purple white, blue, green and gray socks nothing with patterns that need to be matched and definitely no more character socks and who cares if the socks are like leg warmers on the baby then they will just keep him warmer right.  OK so maybe there are a few holes in that plan as well but it is something to consider.

 No conquering the laundry will help with my sanity and is a huge step in getting rid of the clutter and chaos, i need to downsize our wardrobes and realize that the really cute sweater that grandma gave them that they hate because it feels funny or those tops that they only wear once in a blue moon are not worth keeping.  I need to let go of the sentimental attachment and my hoarding ways and realize that less is more and in the case of the laundry this will be a huge huge step forward in helping us live a less stressful more simple life.  Well enough procrastinating onto conquering that mountain.

That's me for today just trying to live life one puzzle piece at a time.
J

Say What????

There are certain things that i say on a regular basis in our house, most of these things i would never before have imagined saying and even now am quite frequently surprised at some of the phrases that pass between my lips,

Keep your clothes on and why are you naked are spoken daily in our house along with stop licking that and what are you chewing on, or now what are you eating.  Most recently i have also added don't bang your head on that and stop hitting yourself to the list of daily phrases,  please use your words, eyes up and how did you get into that also make the list of dailies,  on occasion i have said a few doozies that after passing my lips make me shake my head in complete bafflement  for instance once when we were having a picnic in a park i had to tell my oldest to stop pooping in public yes he had whipped his pants down in the middle of the park and was taking a dump right there beside the path( he is going to hate me for sharing this when he's older but i was mortified and excited at the same time he had just mastered potty training so i was excited he had taken the initiative to go to the bathroom just mortified at his choice of locations) , I've asked more then once how one of my children has gotten their head or another body part stuck in something and all the time i am telling at least one of my children to stop yanking on that in the living room..(.i used to say stop pulling on it it's not going to make it grow any faster but then my smarty pants replied with actually mom when i pull it it does grow... damn you child for being to smart for your own good and taking the threat out of my words with true facts) and once i even had to tell my son to stop licking another child yes you heard that right he kept licking a little girl at play group she must have bathed in cupcakes that morning.   

Now that my two oldest are talking i have often times heard my own words spoken back to me or over heard them being said to someone else, my daughter quite frequently tells her brothers they are driving her up the wall or advises them to put their listening ears on.  My son has recited something that i have said before back word for word and it usually goes a little something like this, but mom you said..... Sure i may have said that THEN but this is now so listen to me now!!! and why oh why do you have a mind like a trap but can only remember the things i don't want you to and totally forget the really important things like keep your room clean, wash your hands and most importantly flush the toilet!!! 

Words can have so much meaning and in our house we celebrate words, we celebrate that our 7 year old has out of the blue become a chatter box and that he is always coming out with interesting facts and the funniest antidotes, when 2 months ago he would barely say a complete sentence, we celebrate the cute things our daughter says in her sing song voice and we celebrate the 3 words that our non verbal son has said, we celebrated when our little babe said da da and ma ma and up for the first time.  Words are wonderful, beautiful and communication is great but sometimes the phrases that pass between my lips are far from eloquent poetry and sound more like that of the ramblings of a mad person or a radio that is only partially tuned in and is picking up several stations at a time.   For the outsider listening in I'm sure they must get a good chuckle at the insanity that is my daily chit chat and i am not embarrassed to say that some days i am very very grateful that only 2 of our kids are verbal because mommy says enough weird things for one household all on her own. 

That's me for today just trying to live life one puzzle piece at a time. 

J

In search of Moose and Meteorite's

Life in our house is anything but predictable, with 4 children under the age of 7 and a husband that works for an organization that is famous for their hurry up to wait and we can not give a date and time tactics, we just have to go with the flow, we don't really have a choice we plan things and if they need changing then we change them on the go and if my husband is away or has to leave then we go without him, such is military life, I refer to it as predictably unpredictable, luckily I am the type of gal that doesn't have an issue with venturing out alone and changing things on the fly,  Last weekend we were supposed to have plans to go to a baby shower, but after Ben woke up in sensory mode, and G went and hid in the closet after i told him what we were going to do i decided a change of plans was in order for everyone's sanity our week had been a challenging one and had been very busy.  

 So i asked them what they wanted to do, we want to go on an adventure, Adventures are good and happen quite often in our family. Well what kind of adventure are we going on today, their response surprised me  i want to see moose and find meteorite's, hmmmm well now this could be a challenge lucky for me i remembered that we had driven past a historical sign that had shown the location for a asteroid that had collided with earth some millions of years ago, on one of our other adventures, so i had a little bit of an idea of where we could at least do the later, and since it was north of us and off the beaten track i figured that would be as good a spot as any to try looking for those moose.  We packed a picnic lunch filled our water bottles and  climbed into the van with an adventure in mind, Ben instantly calmed and G and Gracie were excitedly chatting in the back about the moose they were going to see and the meteorites they were going to bring home, no sense telling them they probably would not actually find meteorites to take home with them.  So off we went, radio blaring windows rolled down baby Remi sleeping soundly.    

After just over an hour i found the sign i had been looking for, turning off of the main road we hit a gravel road, and a sign that said the "Brent Asteroid"- 32km ahead OK so i hadn't realized it was that far off the beaten track, hmmm that was something i hadn't considered but it was a beautiful day and we had no where else to be so we continued on with our adventure, driving slowly past forests ,lakes, wetlands and sand dunes the kids were sitting in the back wide eyed and brimming with excitement, and looking at them through my rear view mirror i knew i had made the right choice.  I could have forced the issue and held tight to our plans because that is what was expected of us and my kids would have been miserable and i would have been stressed and miserable.  My kids were not miserable, they were happy, they were happy to be on an adventure, they were happy to be off the beaten track away from everything and everyone, they needed this time to un-plug from the stresses of life and i needed this time to find my inner peace and sanity. 

We arrived at the location of impact and the kids could not have been more thrilled we climbed to the top of the look out tower and stared down at the large crater, we saw hawks, turtles, frogs, bunnies and lots of bugs, we went for a hike and we had our picnic lunch sitting beside a beautiful lake with not one person around the kids each picked a meteorite (aka rock covered in dirt) to bring home to add to their collection,  we spent an entire day surrounded by nature, and completely un-plugged from the world, ( really we were my cell lost service about 3km in don't worry i had stopped at the park office and told them where we were going)  We had an adventure, we reconnected as a family, (minus daddy who is still away but the kids made him videos and we took lots of pictures)  and most importantly we did what we needed to do for us for our happiness for our emotional well being and for our sanity.   We are still in search of those elusive moose but that can be an adventure for when daddy gets home. 

That's me for today just trying to live life one puzzle piece at a time. 

J