“Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing”. - Phyllis Diller
I was able to organize the lego room last month and it was clean! It looked good, but I wasn't ever working (playing) in there, so maybe it really wasn't good for their work/play, cause the kids just can't get their stuff done in there and keep it organized. They were busy at work all day yesterday and this is how the room now looks:
Isn't that lovely? All my hard work down the toilet, all three big bins on the floor empty with the legos dumped all over. Sigh.
I remember when we lived in a townhouse once... we only had 5 kids at that time and there were legos EVERYWHERE and I was kinda going crazy. I cleaned up the whole house and was very content and the order I created. Then to my surprise my little children were very sad, bored, and uncreative. I had the thought/impression that I could choose to have a clean house and uncreative kids or I could have a messy house and happy creative kids but we'd have lots of cleaning to do. Well, it gets a little old sometimes, but I'd definitely rather have kids that are happy and learning and growing, and we'll make them stop and clean up too. Eventually these simple playful years will be gone and the clean house will come. And I'll probably miss the mess and noise? Hmm, maybe a little. :) For everything there is a season - right now we're busy and learning and getting dirty, the clean house and harvesting into the storehouse will come later in the fall of our life. I know the kids are learning a little bit and will eventually be able to clean up after themselves.
“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.” - Marjorie Pay Hinckley
It's good to work hard. So for now, we'll just try to keep it all contained in the lego room and if it's in there, they can choose how it's done, cause that's their workspace, not mine. My workspace is the house and I will continue on in my responsibility and mission to turn them into independent and responsible adults. It's an uphill battle, but I will till this ground!
Click that link and listen to that song, I love it, I love that whole cd - Brandon Flowers Flamingo. And last month I was clued to the fact that there's a deluxe version with 4 more songs, so I got that for Corey for his b-day. I got a pen and put little black dresses on the flamingo dancers - got to keep things modest for all of us here in our bubble.
The kids love "The Clock Was Tickin'" and I love "Right Behind You" - all the songs are just awesome. - ok, back to my messy house... gonna go clean. I am forever sweeping. La la la
Seems to me like you are a very, very good mom, with thoughts like these. :-)
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