Who's Responsible for This Mess?

Over the last several years the stuff in my house has grown to epic proportions.  Things get bought, brought, borrowed, gifted... but nothing ever leaves.  My mom will tell you that this is how it was in my childhood as well.  At least in my room.  It was bad enough then that I remember coming home from school to 33 gallon trash bags full of my stuff sitting outside the bedroom.  I wasn't allowed to go through it or beg for its salvation.  If I wasn't responsible enough to clean it all up, I wasn't allowed to plead the case for keeping any of it.

When I got married almost 10 years ago, my parents finally got tired of babysitting my stuff and boxed up the contents of my room and said it had to move with me.  Sadly, most of those things are still in the boxes in which they arrived at my new/old house.  It isn't that I don't know how to sort things, throw things away, say goodbye to things.  I know how to do all that.  Decluttering is overwhelming, and my problem always lies in where to begin.  So I'm beginning here...

My name is Amanda, and I am a horrible housekeeper.  

I am not hanging my head in shame.  I am holding my head high, because I know that I can do better.  I'm not admitting defeat, no thing, no stuff, nothing is going to get me down.  I refuse to live another able-bodied day without getting my house straightened out.

I have blustered about the mess for too long without doing anything constructive about it.  
February, being the shortest (and often most hated) month of the year, is a good month to begin a new project.  You're still early in the year, but by February it doesn't quite feel so much like a resolution.  Let's be clear about something:  I have made that resolution many times, and it never stuck.  My house still looks like a wreck.  All.  The.  Time.  There, I said it.  I own it.  When my cousin asked for people to join a February clean-up challenge, I hesitated.  Granted it was only 28 days, but there is so much stuff in my house!  The paper alone might take me a full year to sort through.  In the end I joined, and I felt accomplished for the first time in a long time.  I felt happy about cleaning.  My kitchen looked amazing...until I started cleaning the rest of the house.  My cabinets and pantry are still fantastic, but the floor is a bit crowded.  (Now that I've seen I can manage with stuff in the center of the floor, maybe it's time to petition the hubs for a center island.)  I even started sorting through clothes, which for whatever reason I have a weird emotional attachment to.  I have two tall kitchen trash bags full of clothes I need to donate.  I started going through paper, and just the old bills, receipts, and medical statements took me an entire afternoon to shred and filled a 33 gallon trash bag.  It's sad, really.  Sad that I have let my house get into such a state of junkedupedness.  But after the first week and a half, I slacked off.  Things got busy, hectic, complicated, and I quit unstuffing my house.  And now it's a full month later, and I'm no better off.

I have blamed the husband for the state of our house - after all he hasn't volunteered to clean it up, and when he helps me he asks me what to do with every single thing he finds.  I know he doesn't do it to be difficult, instead he does it because he doesn't want to put anything where I don't want it or to throw away something I might need.  

I have blamed the kids - I mean, really, where does all the stuff come from when you have a kid?  You come home from the hospital with a carseat and a kid and suddenly your home is overrun with stuffed animals, blankets, toys, books, drawings, and life.  And I love every minute of it!  Unless of course I step on a Hotwheels car and bend the axle that my 4 year old will then ask me to repair, and when I repair it the wheel is inevitably going to come off and he will ask me to glue it back on.  No glue on this planet will hold a plastic tire on a metal axle, sorry kiddo.

That brings me to my current question:  who's responsible for this mess?

The short answer is, ME.  I have always blamed everyone but the person responsible.  

Who chooses to read a book (or write this post) instead of sweep the floor?  Who chooses to let the laundry go for one more day?  Who decides that a few dirty dishes don't justify filling a sink and wasting water?  Who can't seem to get a handle on all the stuff?  That would all be ME.  I keep waiting for my small world to change and one day to wake up to a spotless home that isn't piled up, or at the very least for my hard work to actually pay off with a house that remains clean after I've worked diligently for a week to get it in top shape again.  The fact is that unless I change my world, unless I stop being my own worst enemy, unless I care an awful lot about my house being an enjoyable, less stressful environment, nothing is going to change...it's not.  I will be the one who has to concede the victory and let my stuff rule my life.

Last night I had taken all I could.  I simply could NOT look at this mess any longer.  I cleaned on my dining room for four hours, stopping at 1:45am only because I was hungry and my knee was aching.  I found enough pencils to last until my kids graduate college.  I threw things away.  I jammed out to my favorite music...quietly of course, since I was the only one awake.  I felt good about my progress for once, and it was a noticeable difference.  Tonight I am trying to catch up on laundry and dishes that have both been untended for several weeks due to some county-wide water issues.  

My daughter said something earlier that most 6 year olds wouldn't think about - I'm so excited, because tomorrow is a new day!  When did she get so wise!?  Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm so excited because I can decide to change.

Can We Call This Sleep Training If He Doesn't Sleep?

It has been a full week since we started trying to get our kids to bed at a decent hour.  At this point, the kids are becoming more consistent with being ready for bed.  Our days are going a little more smoothly, and I'm becoming anxious for where this might lead.  Nap time is slowly returning to our house!

We have been trying to be home by about 8pm, which gives us some time each night as a foursome to unwind and do the nighttime rituals that are necessary to get us all in bed.  We let the kids play for a few minutes while we get things picked up around the house, finishing with the toys in the living room.  After pickup, we brush teeth (which is not an easy task) and make sure everyone has an empty bladder.  There are few things less enticing than the idea of waking up drenched in someone else's urine (even if it is one of the people you love most in the world)!  Sometimes our daughter protests that she just went potty at mamaw's and papaw's house, but I follow my mom's advice to always try.  I'm satisfied if she can even get out a few drips.  After we accomplish this feat, it is off to bed for story and song time (see previous post). 

It has been amazing to see the childrens' eyes close in sweet slumber before 10pm.  In fact, it has been closer to 9:30 when they nod off to sleep.  Yay!  This means I have the opportunity to start my me time a full hour or more earlier.  I have been able to restart Stormie O'Martian's Power of a Praying Parent book and study/prayer guide.  I have the plan to read this book in conjunction with 2 other of O'Martian's titles: Power of a Praying Wife, and Power of Prayer to Change Your Marriage. 

I have an old-school Mead spiral bound 3 subject notebook that I am keeping my answers from the study/prayer guides in.  That way, they are all in one place, but I have an easy way to keep them separate for ease of use.  Each book is divided into weeklong assignments for reading, reflection, and specific guided prayer.  The workbook asks you some pretty tough questions about your life, expectations, motives, and actions.  It also asks you to write your own prayers to cover a specific area that needs attention - past mistakes that you feel guilt over is one.  I am writing my answers to the questions on one page (half for my daughter, half for my son) - front and back - and the following page is where I am writing my prayers for the week.  So far I have only managed to complete the first week for Parent.

"Slacker!" You might think.  "You've had more time this week than before, and you can't manage to read three chapters?"  Just as I said the kids are becoming more consistent with their bedtimes, my son has not yet made the transition to sleeping through the night (generally wakes after 2 hours in bed).  In fact he has been so off with his behavior since December 21, 2011 that I am going to be making an appointment with his pediatrician for this week.  I have to go with my intuition on this one and say "something ain't right."  I have been tracking his symptoms since he recovered from his cold.  Loss of appetite, change in mood and behavior, severe irritability, change in sleep patterns, stumbling and falling frequently, bruises easily, and a few mysterious blisters on his left middle finger, left pinkie toe, and left heel.  A few mornings ago he even ran into the door when he got out of bed!  He has not had a fever since before his MMR vaccine a week after he recovered from the cold, but I believe strongly that he may have an inner ear infection.  Regardless, I don't think it can wait until his next well-child visit in March.

To add to that, my mom was briefly hospitalized for pneumonia, and the antibiotic they prescribed and administered intravenously (avelox) can cause swollen or ruptured tendons up to 2 years after finishing the drug.  She was also apparently so severely anemic that she is on a high dose of iron twice a day.  She has to go back to the doctor in 2 weeks for repeat lab testing.  If her results have not improved, she will be seeing a renal specialist and likely be subjected to more invasive testing to find the cause of her problems.  It is a very tense and scary situation since her father had impaired renal function, non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, ALS, heart disease, aneurysms in his aorta and both legs, and eventually a stroke.  We already know that she has PVCs (premature ventricular contractions) and A-Fib (atrial fibrillation) as well as a murmur.  This must be genetic, because I also have A-Fib, some mild PVCs, and such a low resting heart rate that my heart actually stopped for nearly 3 seconds while I was sleeping in December 2010 (24 hour monitor followed with a diagnosis of needing a pace maker and a visit with an electrophysiologist and wearing a 28 day Holter Monitor).  Now her fever won't stay down.  She is also taking augmentin, so you would think that the original sinus and ear infection would be gone by now and that the pneumonia would be weakened...  Needless to say, we are praying hard!

Back to my original quandary - is it sleep training if the child isn't sleeping?  I can't let him cry it out when he wakes up, because there is no "out" to his crying.  He will scream for more than an hour - believe me, I know firsthand!  He is weaned, so there is no midnight snacking.  He simply desires physical contact, and he will not settle down until he has it.