The Children Are To Blame

I just love reading magazines and books about organizing. I have always loved to have a clean, organized space (even as a kid) and never feel totally at peace unless my environment is looking good. Sadly, I AM able to function pretty well if things at home are kind of organized. This means that I'm not a complete and total neat freak, just a partial one. I like to have the dishes all done, the kitchen clean, the house vacuumed, and our main living space decent looking, BUT my scrapbook room is always in a state of extreme disarray, drawers are generally a mess, our garage is unsightly, and our hall closet sometimes looks like this!

{Our hall closet today at 9:00am}

I blame the children for the state of this closet. Who raised them anyway? I'm sure this is mess is 85% Whitney and 10% Landon and 5% me. As a disclaimer, I really must repeat that our house is very small, so storage area is at minimum. These lower shelves of the hall closet serve as a place for the kids' games and art stuff, but I also have towels down low as well. It's very hard to keep this area orderly, especially since we've got a Whitney in the house considers shoving things in the closet a cleaning method.

{The ugly scene in the hall half way through cleaning the closet}

I usually never let it get this bad, but have been so busy lately that I haven't been as vigilant. Also, Whitney just wears me down. If I were to have her clean this closet there would be tears, possibly body flailing, much stomping and cries of "It's not fair." Of course, writing this makes me want to MAKE her do it, but really a mess the likes of this is intimidating even to me. The real goal is to help her not to create these messes in the first place, but all my words seem to be in vain. This girl is a challenge to my core. She is a good-natured, fun girl, but her joie de vivre doesn't contain any thing remotely resembling a desire to clean.

{The finished closet!}

So I tackled the closet myself. Once again the perk of not involving Whitney is this process is that I can eliminate many things without her knowledge. I had the trash can and recycle bag next to me so I could sort quickly, it went well. I also sorted through our basket of medications and found many expired items (some of them had never been opened), so now that basket is substantially less full. It always feels good to get rid of the clutter, as I was cleaning I decided that I must let it build up to the point that I can't take it anymore because then I have no problem getting rid of things. I suppose that if it's only kind of messy then I have trouble letting go of things. Hmmm, it's always frightening/interesting when the all-or-nothing aspects of my personality rear their ugly head.

**How do your closets and drawers look?
Are you an all-or-nothing kind of person?
How do you "help" your kids catch the vision of organizing?**