Day Seven and Eight - you'll see why

On Friday I began my ten year old's room.  He loves Lego, has way too much of it, and sadly, he is a pack rat.  He brings home all sorts of goodies all the time. It's awful.  My daughter, who is eleven, did not want me to do his room. "He should do it" she declared with utmost maturity.  Well, yes, I agree.  I also know that his room had gone, once again, beyond his capacity to do anything with.  It was too much, the mess was too big, he would have had to have help and there's no way it would have been complete in a reasonable amount of time.  I had to give him a starting point.  All told, his room took six and a half hours. 

WHY did it take so long?  Because I wasn't just tidying up, I was organizing.  Painstakingly going through every bin, every cubby box, taking out garbage, extracting every little tiny piece of Lego from each and putting them in their proper bins. I've said it before, every room has looked clean before - but it wasn't organized.  Being a pack rat made his room so much worse of a chore.  I have a plan for that.  Dollar store, here I come, but first, the unholy transformation.

I spent three hours in there on Friday and I was done.  I was also feeling extremely imperfect because it was the first room I hadn't been able to straighten up in one day.  I half wondered if that was too much, even for me, in my incredibly determined state.  I closed his door and felt horrible but I couldn't handle it any more.  It was such a big task.  I woke up on Saturday a procrastinator but that didn't last long.  The rest of the rooms were accessible and neat.  Every other room on the upper floor was tidy, so I got to work.

On the one hand, I had thought that most of the hard stuff was done the day before and to a point, it was - I had organized the majority of the Lego and I had stopped when I found one more fabric bin full of Lego and other ... crap.  That was my breaking point on Friday.  It was the first thing I dumped out on Saturday.  The thing was, I could still barely move in there.  After the bin was done, I removed an old dresser from his closet.  More Lego.  Fine.  Picked it up and decided I really needed some sense of accomplishment so I grabbed the vacuum and did the closet and entry way of his room.  Well that sparked some additional motivation.

I thought about FlyLady's "hotspots".  If there's a place to put crap, the tired us will put it there.  So I removed a shelf that he clearly didn't need.  I rearranged the dresser and the bookshelf because the dresser stuck out more, giving Ethan a nice little hiding place for, lets face it, more crap.  Exit the unnecessary shelf and put the Lego bins into the closet; suddenly, there's more space.  I can move around.

Is the closet the best place for the Lego?  Probably not, but lately he hasn't been using it as much and though I would have loved to take it downstairs, that seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.  It's also summer time so I hardly expect him to be sitting in his room playing Lego all day - that will change come fall/winter.  I notice that he needs some place to sit in there now and low and behold - we can fit stuff!  I'm considering a futon (we have two around the house) because the extra bed wouldn't be a bad thing either. 

I'm purchasing three baskets for the top of his bookshelf.  One will be for "new" things he brings into the room (aka; the packrat crap).  One thing that has become amazingly obvious to me is that our entire household needs an overhaul in our organization methods - or in our case, we need to implement them or we will be right back where we started.  Each week, let's say Thursdays, he will have to go through the "new" basket and decide what to keep (place in basket number two), and what he may be undecided about (basket number three).  On Saturday, anything in the "keep basket" must find a home.  I expect this to take ten minutes or less and will supervise.  The "undecided basket" must be decided; find a home or place in garbage bag, in hand.

My hope of course is that this exercise, if adhered to regularly, will make him think twice before bringing it home to begin with.  I refuse to saddle some poor woman with a packrat in the future because he will either find another packrat (heaven help them) or she will leave his packrat butt and he might come home again.  Neither is an acceptable option.  Future daughter-in-law, you are welcome.

Since today is a holiday, FlyLady has us working on the weekly "home blessing" and the rest of our week is spent in the kitchen.  The "weekly blessing" is a quick refresh after the weekend break and normally happens on Sunday.  Run the vacuum around the main areas, put stuff away if you just got back things like that.  My sink is still shiny - is yours?  I need to get into my kitchen cupboards - the rest of the kitchen is still clutter free after one week!  But there's some disaster areas; drawers and cupboards will be my FlyLady focus and I have to get the back yard done and move into the basement. Room by room, one a day.  I am so looking forward to real fresh start in September.  Cheers!