I know this is not the kind of post you are probably looking for during my dry season of blogging. But I need your help! :) I am, in the words of the Flylady, suffering from CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome). Except that I do have people over. Embarrassed. And just ask them to over look my messy and unclean house, of which has now become the new norm.
It is becoming more and more clear to me that the organized person I was before children has gone into hiding. I can't seem to find her anywhere! She would peek her head in now and then when it was just Grace, but now that Matthew is in tow I have not heard nary as much as a "how are you" from her.
So what I need from you is this: I feel as though many of you have it much more together than I do. I'm looking for those little tips that seem to be eluding me. Such as:
- How is your house getting clean? I really prefer the all-in-one-day method, but I'm thinking that is out the window for this stage of life. How do you do it?
- How do you organize and store what seems to be a growing amount of kids clothes, especially when we have both girl and boy clothes? Do you have a way to store whats going in and whats going out temporarily when seasons are changing, or sizes are growing but they don't all need to be put away yet?
- How about those dreaded piles? This has always been a struggle for me, but now I don't seem to have the time to do a whirlwind "pick up". How do you prevent them in the first place? I'm talking mail that needs dealing with, catalogs/newspapers/articles that you want to keep, things that need to be done but you can't get done at that moment and need to be stashed... you know, the CHAOS! :)
If you have any advice for part, all, or some of the questions, please let fill me in! If it's easier, you can email me cathrynjohansson@fuse.net or post it as a response. Maybe I'll even put all the answers together in a blog post so we can all benefit from each other's wisdom! :)
Grace's first tea party. A reenactment of the ones us grand kids used to have with Gram...now Grace is part of tradition! The only thing that competed with the sweetness of the little tea set with little finger foods was that Gram had rocks and pine cones in her yard. Ah yes, Grace is in touch with her girly and outdoors-y sides.
Here is the post from Grace's third birthday that I wrote belatedly. We had her birthday in Albuquerque as well as my Great-Grandmother's 100th birthday.
Before we left for Albuquerque, we said good-bye to the Malibu. I know I had a love/hate relationship with that car over the years, but it was strangely sad to not see it in our garage anymore. I told Erik that I had been with that car more than 10 years- longer than he and I had been together! That also meant that I am now officially old- staring 30 in the face AND a minivan mommy. Eeek. It is true, though: I love the van a lot more that I thought I would, just like I was told by other, wiser minivan moms. :)
