My Moment of Garage Zen

So I've been feeling a little whelmed lately. Not overwhelmed, but whelmed. As you may know if you've been reading recent posts, I am on a mission to seek and destroy clutter in the house. But even anti-clutter superheroes have their bad days.

Our weekend began by tackling the Christmas decorations. Yes, we still had them up. I was so tired from the awful cold I had last weekend, and Michael won me over with his "who cares if the Christmas decorations are still up?" argument. Like I said, I was too tired to care.

But by Monday, I cared. And the Christmas stuff bugged me all week.

So during naptime on Saturday, all evidence of holiday cheer was packed away. But we still hadn't tackled the real source of my irritation -- the general clutter scattered just about everywhere.

We plugged away at it throughout the weekend, stopping for various reasons -- to eat, change a diaper, buy a file cabinet, watch a movie...you know. The usual stuff. But I started getting really down Sunday night because of this:

Empty shelves in the garage (good), random stuff sitting in the middle of the garage (not good), both cars sitting in the driveway (not good at all). 

I hate it when randomly placed items displace my car. And I just hate starting a week with an incomplete house project still on my plate. I mean, all we needed to do was put the random stuff somewhere and pull the cars in, but I still felt annoyed. 

Then, I managed to pull myself out of my grumpy mood for a minute and think about what we have accomplished in two days. The Christmas stuff is put away. (Yay!) We have a much smaller file cabinet that will free up more space in our house. (Yay!) Three boxes of baby clothes are boxed up and appropriately stashed in the garage. (Yay!)

I started to feel a little better after taking the photo above. I turned around to go back in the house after capturing my anti-clutter photographic evidence, and I saw this:

Now. If you know me at all, you know I'm an incredibly sappy person. Most people wouldn't see anything in the picture above but a group of ski boots.

What did I see? (Okay, hear me out. I'm about to get super sappy on you...) I saw evidence of a family. 

You know when something happens to you in your life, something totally unexpected, and you just kind of go, okay....I've been missing the bigger picture here. Well, something outside of myself seemed to turn my eyes right on those boots, as if to say, look -- you're frustrated, but you have a reason to HAVE little ski boots in your house. You're lucky.

So after spending a weekend hating all the STUFF around here, I've had a change of heart. Yes, some of it is useless and taking up space. Some of it annoys me to no end. But even the irritating stuff is part of who we are -- a family. A family with faults, but one that's trying to enjoy life and take one day at a time. And although our house is filled with a lot of unorganized clutter, it is also filled with love and laughter.

I just hope I can remember that while tackling the clutter in the laundry room.

Wish me luck.

We asked for it, didn't we?

Aww...look at it. Isn't it shiny? 

It certainly was a stunning sight on Christmas morning. Perfect and gleaming with a nice big bow.

Well, the Kidcraft Retro Kitchen has certainly become a part of life in Raygunland. It sits just off the kitchen so when I'm cooking, Kellan can too -- and keep safely away from the dangers of the real kitchen. But with all the possibilities of imaginative play, comes one big drawback. It's something that didn't occur to me until a few days before Christmas, when a co-worker bemoaned the fact that his wife bought the kids another kitchen. He pointed out that the family's previous kid kitchen had a nasty habit of exploding all over the house. And he predicted much of the same with Kitchen #2.

Hmm... I thought. Didn't really consider that possibility....

Of course, at that point, it was too late. And now I know exactly what he was talking about.

Of course, when Santa bought the kitchen, it didn't contain all that food. That was all purchased as gifts by our sweet and generous family. But boy, is there a lot of it.

It's great for all kinds of recipes ("eee-pees," in Kellan-speak) or grocery shopping. Not so good for a mommy who is currently on a mission to seek out and destroy clutter.

Just looking at the pictures makes me tired. 

But I will say this: I felt a tiny surge of pride when reading about another blogger's desire for some compromise on all the boy toys in her household. She is drowning in boy stuff and really covets the Melissa & Doug Slice & Bake Cookie set. Yay! We have one! (Thanks, Mom.)

I guess that makes me feel a little better. This house is an equal opportunity play environment. Kellan has cars and blocks and a bike, AND a Cabbage Patch Doll that he takes very good care of. So even though I spend a lot of time dodging wooden fruits and vegetables when I'm passing through the house, at least I'm not tripping on a ton of little cars and army soldiers when my house becomes a nightmare in Toyland. 

At least not yet.

Crappy wrap job

I got a couple of fantastic vegetarian slow cooking recipe books for Christmas (thanks Dad, Linda and Ashley!) and I love them. I've already tried out one recipe and it came out beautifully. 

I do not love, however, the way one of them looked when it arrived. It looks like it was wrapped by a two year old, then partially unwrapped, and shipped off to my house. Not worth the five extra bucks for gift wrap -- wouldn't you agree?