"Wow! You're a Big Family!" Controlling the Chaos Tidbit #7-Dealing with Crap

Crap-we've all got it.  It's looking into your bathroom storage closet and realize you have somehow bought 10 boxes of Band Aids and now are able to cover over 1, 000 owies should you ever have the need.  It's the poor lonely clothes that have been abandoned to the darkest corners of your closet because they don't fit, are ugly, or are missing a button and you're too lazy to fix it.  It's the jeans that are pajamas that you received as a birthday gift but you know you will never ever use despite dear Aunt Ethel's assertion that they are so comfy and fashion forward.  I do try to keep our crap collection to a minimum.  Because with 6 of us, there is no shortage of crap.

When talking about crap, there are 3 basic groups into which I sort items I no longer want or need:  throw away, donate, or sell.  The throw pile is pretty easy.  Anything broken gets thrown.  (And often cheap junk like trinkets from carnivals or the doctor's office get thrown too.)  However, actually throwing items away with children around is not so easy.  It involve trickery.  And subterfuge.  (And lots of sneaking things out when they aren't looking and then strategically placing more garbage on top of those things so no one realizes you threw it away.)  Don't judge me.  If you have small children, you have probably one or two broken Happy Meal toys that have met the awful fate of being buried alive under the coffee grounds.  You are maybe just not admitting it.

For donate, I generally have boxes or bags just for items I want to donate.  The first two are for boxes of hand me downs that I intend to pass on to my friends who have children just a bit younger than mine.  The third box is for a women's shelter.  The third is a box for Flip Flop Fleet which collects shoes, underwear, and bras for Haiti.    The fourth box is for our local thrift store.  To make this work, I do have to kind of have a plan beforehand and have an idea of what are acceptable donations for each place.

My last pile is for items I would like to sell.  This includes the dreaded words "garage sale."  Garage sales are a lot of work.  (Sometimes more work than what is profitable but that's another story.)  I try to cut down on my garage sale headache by staying on top of the garage sale pile throughout the year.  Here's how-whenever I have an item I want to put in the garage sale pile, before I put it in garage sale box, I put the price on a sticker and attach it to the item.  That method ensures that the bulk of my pricing is done months and months before the actual garage sale.  (Another quick tip is to not price books and stuffed animals or other small kids toys; just throw them in a box at the garage sale and have all books or all stuffed animals or small toys worth 50 cents or a quarter.  Anything like that I don't pre price; I just through it in the garage sale box and deal with it on garage sale day.)  I also have a few other options for selling items.  We use a local consignment store for most of our clothing.  They take both kids' clothes and adult, so anything I would like to consign I put in a box to take to the consignment store about once a month.  I usually average $15 a month at the consignment store.  With the baby, I've also gotten onto quite a few for sale by owner type sites on Facebook where people are selling all sorts of stuff locally like kids' clothing, baby gear, and furniture.  I've bought items from these sites and I have used these sites to sell items too.

Throw, donate, or sell-those are the piles.  Lest you think my house is crapfree, come visit.  You're welcome to see my crap that usually fills the counter that I've claimed as office space.  Just don't look in the garbage. Under the paper towels, leftover spaghetti, and half eaten apple,  you just might hear an armless Barbie begging to be rescued

"Wow! You're a Big Family!" Controlling the Chaos Tidbit #6-Paper Clutter

I am not the world's best housekeeper.  Not even close.  I kind of pick and choose what I clean.  (Until certain things get so gross that I can't stand to look at them anymore.  Like the inside of the microwave.  And the patio doors.)  But there are certain things that I do try to tackle everyday because not doing so would drive me batty.

Like paper clutter.  It seems like it's one of those things that where if neglected, it starts multiplying.  Between bills, newspapers, coupons, calendars, kids schoolwork, junk mail, and magazines, it just grows and grows and grows.

 My best tricks for trying to keep it contained:

1.  Have a place for things beforehand.  For me, this kind of boils down to a couple of things.  I have a 3 ring binder that organizes our life.  It has my master calendar, a section for school related papers (like schedules and lunch menus), a section for phone numbers, and a section for information for baby sitters.  I have a dish drainer that I use to organize the papers I most often use.  (Unpaid bills, Zeke's Shriner's stuff, and insurance forms are 3 files I have in there right now.  Plus a miscellaneous folder for those random papers that don't really merit a folder of their own but that you know you will need.)  The slots for the dishes are just the right side for keeping a file upright and I use the silverware basket to hold my unpaid bills, a checkbook, and address labels.  Our dining room has a built in desk area with drawers for filing which is where I keep the paid bills, warranty information, insurance policies, etc..  I also have another binder that is for my coupons.

2.Only touch it once.  I try to only touch paper stuff once.  This means when I bring in the mail I quickly sort out the junk mail from everything else and put it in recycling.  The bills I put in my bill holder until I am ready to pay them.  Invitations go into my binder and get written on the calendar.  School lunch menus get punched and put into my binder.  I have a file for insurance paperwork, a file for Zeke's Shriner's stuff, etc. so that I can quickly put those things away.  I try to deal with papers as soon as they enter the house so that I can avoid the dreaded piles of paperwork.

I also try to follow those two tips when I deal with my papers from my kids' school.  Each of my school age kids have a clipboard on the end of our desk space.  When they unpack their book bags, any papers get clipped to the clipboard.  The papers stay there until I am ready to look at them.  Then, I recycle what we aren't keeping, send back to school what needs to go back, and file anything that looks important that I might want to keep for them to look back on.  We also have a display wall in the hallway with clipboards where the kids can display their papers.  Each kid has two clipboards.  This means they can only hang up two pictures at a time.  That means they have to do some thinking about what they want to display.

This is a real life photo.  Note the large box on the floor, the messy winter clothing, and the half erased chalkboard.

And what to do with those papers you want to keep for your kids? At our house, each kid has a large box in the basement.  Any papers they want to keep get placed in the box.  I do try to date the pieces but other than that, there really isn't any organization to the boxes.  I just toss the papers in and I'm hoping that one box will be sufficient for each kid through high school.

Satisfaction

It always sounds innocent enough.  A simple little yearning for something that you think might make you happier.  But left to its own devices, that yearning sets you up for disappointment as it cycles and filters and ferments in your mind.  It finally grows into discontent, where you find yourself throwing a pity party over what you don't have.

We all have our secret longings that if left unchecked become the peas under our mattresses, creating bruises in our hearts and calling us out not as pleasant princesses but as someone whose inner diva is unfulfilled.

A family with more widely spaced children?  Ah, that would be nice.  It would certainly help tune out some of the noise and I'm sure those older kids in that more widely spaced family are way more responsible than mine.

A vacation to Disney?  I know my kids would love it but I'm not sure I can justify that expensive of a trip, especially if we want to do another adoption.  Sometimes adoption feels weighty and burdensome.  I just can't help but feel a bit jealous of that family who is getting to make the trip.

A rustless, dentless, lower mileage van?  I know mine is perfectly fine but I sometimes get tired of being thrifty out of necessity.  And if we added another child, where would they sit?  How do all these other families afford the more expensive vehicles that they drive?

I recently heard someone say a simple but profound statement.

"God is my satisfaction."

I may still be dealing with post pregnancy hormones but those words seriously pricked my heart and brought a few small tears to my eyes.  I loved the phrasing.  Maybe because it changes the more common wording of "God satisfies" and eliminates the idea of God doing something for me, which I can quickly corrupt into an all-about-me-yes-I-love-how-God-does-things-for-me type endeavor.  Or perhaps it's because it extends the idea being satisfied by tying it to God's character, making it a part of Who He is.  Satisfaction becomes a noun, not something I am longing for and trying to achieve.  As a noun, satisfaction is already accomplished.  No working hard to deny my desires and telling myself how silly I am to seek fulfillment apart from God.  No trying to push down those feelings of envy or discontent and then feeling less than because they have popped back up.  It's simply saying "God is my satisfaction and I can choose Him at every moment. I do not need to try harder, work harder, do better."

Yes, God is my satisfaction.  A satisfaction without an end or a beginning.  A satisfaction that has already been realized not one that has yet to come to fruition.  God is my satisfaction.

News

Zeke has a new shark hat.

Someday he will learn to smile without looking like he is in pain.

Conleigh got her ears pierced.  It was one of her wishes for her birthday which is coming up.

And the baby has now eaten pumpkin, carrots, and peas.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

The grandmas may be the only ones who care but...by way of a broken deep freeze, Kai is now a pumpkin eater.

I was pondering what veggie to start him on but then our deep freeze stopped working so thawing bags of frozen pumpkin made the choice rather easy.

Funnies a la Zeke

*Perhaps we shouldn't laugh at this but it cracked both D and I up.  Last week, Zeke was playing "guess which hand" with Conleigh.  As in "I'll hide an object in my hand and you guess which hand it's in."  He was the hider not the guesser.  Needless to say, Conleigh guessed right every time.

*After having a bloody nose, I reminded him not to pick his nose since this could cause it to bleed again.  He told me he didn't do that but when I looked his finger, I could see it was a bit bloody so I asked him if that's how the bloody nose started, if he had been picking his nose.  Again, he told me no but then he quickly added, "I just had a booger."  Um, yep, buddy, that's called picking your nose.

Baby Milestones

Weighed in on Monday at 15 pounds 1 ounce. That's almost to double his birth weight of 7 pounds 14 ounces.

Was 25.5 inches long.

Has started talking a lot.  From shrieks to giggles to cooing.  Usually wakes up talking.  (He apparently is his mother's child.)

Has found his toes.  Can't quite get them up to his mouth yet.

Got my toys and my monkey-life is good

Lists to one side when on his back but can't roll over yet.  He'd much rather work on learning to sit up because when you can sit up, you can see a lot more.

Can grasp objects and manipulate them to get them into his mouth.  Can hold his bottle on his own for short times.

  

Favorite toys include Sophia the Giraffe and any of the hanging toys that hang on the car seat or on his play mat.

Started a bit of cereal on Tuesday.  Ate most of it and didn't spit it out.  We'll call that success.

Hanging out in the high chair, little bit of schmutz on my face