Grown-ups Live Here - Really

Grown-ups live here – Honestly they do!  Though I realize that sometimes it can be hard to tell.

Is it too much to ask that when someone enters my house for there to be signs that grown-ups live here?  I don’t mind that there are signs that there are kids living here, after all I’m the one who put the Fisher Price Loving Family dollhouse in the living room, I’m the one who put the kids DVD’s in the corner and the little table and chairs with the moon-sand kit on it in the room but the rest of the stuff in the room should show some sort of sign that there are grown-ups living here.  I don’t want a sterile “adult” place but I’d like a few less princess things in the communal living space if you know what I mean.

When the kids were really little it was hard to get rid of the “kids rule this place” look since there were swings, baby seats, bumbos, high chairs, rockers, changing tables, strollers etc. to take up a ton of space but the “baby” here is now in kindergarten and its time for a major kid stuff purge.

We regularly do a sweep of the place for stray toys, wandering stuffed animals and piles of books and other paper items trying to get them back in their place (kids rooms or the basement, on shelves or in the trash) but somehow the place always looks like a combination of a toy store and paper factory explosion. And all of them now being in school has not helped things at all.  The sheer volume of paper that finds its way home from school and into the clutter that is taking over is driving me nuts.

So, I ask, do other people have “kids stuff everywhere” issues?  Or, do they do what I do whenever other “grown-ups” are coming over?  Usually I feel that I have to spend a couple of hours plowing through all of the stuff that has escaped the kids rooms and basement and found its way into the rest of the house.  Of course there is never time for that so it hardly every happens and everything gets scooped up into my arms, deposited in a large box or bags somewhere and squirreled away in a closet, bedroom or the basement waiting for “when I get some time to go through it and take care of it all”.  What usually happens first is the kids find it all again and they pull it out making the stuff migrate all over again.  Lather, rinse and repeat.

I used to pride myself on being very organized, I used to have an organized home and while at work (when I had a job), my work space was always in line and I could find anything on a few minutes notice.  I have this great goal to establish my business and work from home but I need my work space to be organized and since my home would be my office the fact that it is taken over by chaos is not helping me in my efforts.  Clearing out the basement office is a plan but as that is the hiding room for all of the stuff over the years it is also a mountain to plow through first.

So for the past 2 weeks rather than blogging as I intended, (or searching for paying work as I should be) I’ve been spending a lot of my waking hours with no kids at home going through boxes of “stuff” (or crap as I like to call it).  Boxes of kids clothes that I was waiting to get to, boxes of paper and stuff that I was waiting to get to, piles of kid stuff everywhere, toys that my kids are way too old for, boxes that have been moved over and over again waiting for me to get time to go through are now all in my sights. 

So in my quest to make my house workable and look like grown-ups live here I’ve taken 11 boxes of stuff (not crap) to the Salvation Army.  I’ve emptied out and or consolidated another 15 boxes of stuff (down to 4 or 5 boxes at this point) and filled many many garbage bags with a lot of that stuff I was waiting to get a change to go through and decide what to keep and what to get rid of (guess I know what was actually “crap” now) FINALLY.  Yikes – this could take a while.  Stay tuned.  Sooner or later this place will be workable and it will look like grown-ups live here.