Dis-organization

I have been bitten by the spring cleaning bug.

At first I thought it was my OCD catching up with me, as I have buried it way down deep into my psyche. It is impossible for me to continuously embrace my need to organize and still hold on to that last minuscule shred of sanity. Perhaps my daughters were sent to me by my mother as payback for all my messes.

While everything has a sort of home in our lives, it has become more ‘commune living’ than ‘solitary confinement.’ And if I insisted things live exactly where I want them to live, I will be cleaning non-stop 24 hours a day and crying into my dust buster.

So, I’ve had to choose between relaxing that compulsion and a tiny padded room. Every once and a while, the entire house needs a douching to herd the crap back into some logical conformity. Time to jettison the neglected; the broken; and the legions of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys that have been coagulating in numerous corners of the abode.

I always begin this pursuit enthusiastically, in the room that makes me shudder: the playroom. Over the past few months, the girls have been required to clean up when they are done playing. There are boxes, bins, crates, bags and other methods of containing the clutter, yet they go unused.

Once a quarter I attempt to claw through it, because ponies cohabiting with princesses could potentially create a Catherine the Great situation. I first evacuate everything, and then begin the lengthy process of getting it back to its “home.” In the end, three piles of items remain: donated because they have been outgrown (baby toys), donated because they are no longer being used but are in good condition, or thrown away because they are broken or missing pieces.

This organization process actually takes quite a few days to accomplish. Here’s why:

“Oh, look, here’s a Barbie shoe. I’ll take this Barbie shoe and go put it into the Barbie clothes box.”

As I walk into the room where the Barbie closet resides, my eyes are immediately drawn to a dish on the bed.

I pick up the dish, absentmindedly placing the shoe in my back pocket.

I take the dish into the kitchen, and there are a few others in the sink.

I open the dishwasher to put the dirty dishes in, and the dishwasher is fully loaded with clean dishes.

I begin to put away the dishes when I find the missing binky.

I take the binky upstairs to Emmeline’s bedroom, where 47,000 Bendaroos have been strewn into a spaghetti nightmare on the floor.

I pick up the Bendaroos and bring them into the laundry room closet where they are stored.

Since I’m in the laundry room, I throw in a load of whites and take the latest load out of the dryer.

I try to place the load on the couch, but first have to first move an American Girl doll that would have asphyxiated under the towels.

…which leads me back to the room where I started, and I still haven’t put the Barbie shoe away. I forgot it was in my pocket, along with 35 other odds and ends I picked up along the way.

What was I in here for again?

I’d call for help, but I can’t find my phone.

Tracy Winslow is one of the top four funniest people at her address. She lives with her husband and two daughters in California. You can read more of their hilarious antics on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog, Momaical.