A Complete Mess

I admit it. I am weird. I like to clean. I really, really like to clean. But not just that....I like to organize too. I have a label maker that has seen more than its fair share of usage since I brought it home to live with me. I know the Queen of England is not coming over for dinner, but just in case, my formal dining room table is dusted and polished and there are candles standing by ready for action. I am quite sure that no one cares, but my boys' closets are color coordinated. One thing in particular that I am especially fond of is vacuuming. It's really too bad too because my kids also like to vacuum. What a waste of a favorite household chore! They vacuum and then I have to vacuum again so the lines are straight and the dirt is FOR SURE gone. (I know, I already said I was weird). Or else I wait until they are off at school and I sneakily vacuum without their knowledge.

For some reason though, I carry the cleanliness principle into every room of my house EXCEPT my own office. My office is a disaster. How can I be so clean, neat, and organized and yet the room that I spend so much time in is a complete mess? I know where everything is...most of the time. I almost always can find the right pile to look into when Sam needs the paper that his teacher sent home three weeks ago that details a report he needs to complete by tomorrow. I know where my coupon is for Ann Taylor, oh no wait that one is expired, well I have a new one over here in this basket, somewhere...just keep digging. Speaking of baskets, it's not like I don't try to keep it neat and organized. I think to myself that if everything had a "place" then it would be easy to keep clean. So now I have a basket for my purses, a bin for soccer forms, a wall organizer for office supplies, a dresser with cards and craft stuff, a work table that is perpetually full, a cork board, 2 memo boards, a bin for Sam's schoolwork, one for Austin's, magazine organizers, jars for buttons and pens, a bookshelf! For crying out loud, I have a bin that is labeled "Label Maker". Now that is just sad....

I suppose in a lot of ways this all makes perfect sense. I am a stay at home mom. I spend my life making other people's lives better and easier. My house is visitor-ready. My kids have clean clothes on every day. My laundry is put away, the kitchen is swept and the kids don't need to ask me where to find a pencil because I have their homework corner straight as a pin. I don't have time for my office and I honestly don't want to clean it up. When it comes to my own space, I am surrounded by things that I love. No, don't try to hang another thing on my cork board or you might cover the BEST picture of a dinosaur that Austin drew me. Or the note from Sam that says, "Mom I love you in the hole in tire wold." I can't find my car keys all the time, but my painted vase from Sam and my ladybug made out of a flowerpot that Austin created are ALWAYS by my computer screen. I have an unbroken sand dollar that we collected from the beach last summer, a piggy bank from when I was a baby, and my beloved grandparents' old cookbooks on a shelf. I guess I can deal with the mess. There are a lot of memories hidden underneath.