Bonfire

                              

I have been told that if kids aren't messy there is probably something wrong with them. I really hope that's true.

If it is, in my case, I have 5 perfectly normal kids. They love to play, eat, cut, color, spill, pee, and kick their shoes off as they please....all of which creates an aftermath that sends me the reminder that I am indeed a parent.

Since I have been having babies between 1999 and 2011, I have learned a few things on the subject of cleaning up.

It's a typical day in our household. The kids are in school while my youngest is home watching Blues Clues. The bills have to be paid, the pantry is empty, no dinner plans yet and then I walk into the living room. Now there are some parents out there who would gasp as they walk into a sea of toys, granola bar wrappers, empty glasses, crayons, paper scraps and socks....even the potty! Well, that should also be my reaction with the added responsibility of reminding my children that their allowance depends on the truth that the issue must be taken care of once they return from school.

As time passes through the day and the kids have been home a while, it's time to break the news. Now if I was a kid and my mom told me to clean the living room in the catastrohic state being as it is, I would probably hit the wii myself after picking up a pair of sock and
maybe one toy.

There was a time where after useless reminders and empty threats, I would become exhausted only to end up doing the job myself. Through experience, I realized that cleaning a mess of this magnitude is very overwhelming. Even I would question where I was supposed to start....until one day, I found a solution!

Since there are usually so many different items that are to be put away in so many different places, the easiest thing to do would be to collect ALL the items and create one big pile in the middle of the room and that's what we did. So the floor is now clear with one large pile in the middle of the room. The thought of lighting it all on fire came to mind but I wouldn't want to traumatize anyone.

So now that half the job is complete and everything is in one place right in front of us helps make it easy to sort and assign a destination to each child. Emma gets the shoes, Laurel gets the toys, and Deidre gets the trash. Keep it up, mission accomplished!

Maybe, just maybe, someday my house may be as tidy as the family's across the street with just 2 kids. I just don't get that worked up it. If you have kids, you have messes. It's just what kids do.