Cut the Crap: My Son's Room...The squeaking must end....

I am not what you would call a "clean freak"...I am, perhaps, a bit of a slob... NOT a dirty person, but I am a clutter collector and woman of many interests....One husband +one MIL+ two kids + myself + 1200 square ft =The SCARIEST place on Earth...

  I do well (between homeschooling 2 grades, cooking meals, buying groceries, etc.) to keep clean dishes in the cabinet and the kitchen floor from becoming a petri dish. I believe that housework is insanity because Einstein defined insanity as,"..doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result."

I don't like it...I might even hate it... If I ever killed anyone, it would probably be t-minus 10 minutes from someone's expected arrival time, and, despite the frantic bumble-buzzing of the living room, I hear a knock at the door....That JW will never know what hit him....lol! If housework creates crazy, Honey, I have arrived...

Needless to say, my house is usually in less than ideal conditions...particularly the kids' rooms, which cleaning consists of closing the door and averting my eyes....

Fast forward to my current conundrum: with the onset of cooler weather, we have a new stowaway: A small furry demon that ate my new bag of organic blue corn chips! A mouse!

Now...some people are trap people...They have a little catch and release program happening... Not me! You stepped into the wrong casa mi amigo. I use poison....A slow painful death?! Good... The one downside to poison is that.... somewhere....you end up with a dead mouse.

So I have to thoroughly clean my house now. That brings us to yesterday, when I began the daunting trip into Hell...aka...my son's room.

I'm not going to lie.... Once I began pulling the horde out of his room, I realized that...all things considered...he kept it pretty clean...At the 3 hour mark, while STILL removing items from the room, I took a step back and realized he was a magician....A veritable Mary Poppins with her bottomless carpet bag of tricks... How did it all fit?!  I wish I was exaggerating....

Two things began to simultaneously occur:
1. I have done him a great injustice by teaching him how to cram things, rather than only keeping what fits in the space, and...
2. This must change...now!

13 hours of sorting and tossing and purging and organizing... 13!

Admittedly, I read this in a different blog, but it is a great idea (that actually works!), so I'm going to share... Make a toy pile, and rather than focusing on what goes, let your kid "shop" his toys and decide what stays! Also, the language YOU use when discussing toys sways their decisions... You REALLY want to get RID of THAT?! ....and, instantly, the child feels guilty for wanting it gone.... This. Was. All. My Fault. He cut it by more than half... and it is much better.... He worked so hard that I turned his closet into the TARDIS....He even has a tiny desk now....

There is good news.... We didn't find any dead mice in his room....even THEY were smart enough not to go in there....
Peace.