Where's the easy button? And why I am not organized...

I keep coming back to the same stresses, no matter that I was supposed to be more disciplined this year. My life is disorganized, my house is cluttered and messy and that makes me feel messy and my brain feels cluttered. I used to be so good at organizing things, a place for everything and everything in it's place. The kind of life where you don't lose your glasses or keys or those important papers. The kind of life where things are where they are supposed to be so you don't waste minutes, hours, or days looking for them. The kind of life where you don't forget important appointments or forget to file your taxes on time. I used to be disciplined, I used to be organized, I used to be sane! I am now overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed, and at the brink of insanity.
 
Now I find tools on the bathroom sink, or the top shelf of the coat closet, dinky cars and batteries, and cell phone chargers, and magazines, and just plain junk amidst the piles of mail that has gathered on the kitchen counter for months. Bills that might have been paid on time if my memory served me well. I find toothpaste in the buffet, plates and cups hide out under couches (the cups are always filled with chocolate milk that has soured by the time we find them). Getting ready to go anywhere is a chore, there are about 5 places that shoes and coats congregate in our house (one of those being the dog's bed of course) so I run around like a mad woman searching for coats and matching shoes and the ball cap someone has lost. There are toys everywhere, laundry piled up on the washer and drier waiting to be put away, dishes in the sink, disorganized, cluttered, mess everywhere. Every morning the newspaper is left on the dining table. Inevitably over the course of the day, there are coats hung on backs of chairs, toys and play dough collected on the table, a magazine, a computer, a box of crayons, maybe a box of nails or a screwdriver or hammer too, so that where it is time for dinner we gather the entire pile and shove it someplace else. Not very disciplined huh?


My day is consumed with diverting disasters and cleaning the chaos of the moment, there is no time for the piles and misplaced items that need attention. I'm lucky if I get to unloading the dishwasher before the nights supper dishes need to be loaded again. I could clean all day and accomplish nothing, because behind me are two little boys that leave a mess in their wake, tornadoes in jeans. A puppy that steals clothing from the hamper, chews shoes, and anything else she can get her paws on. A husband who is a little (OK maybe a lot) like his sons. And a Mom who can't juggle it all.

 "Cleaning your house while your children are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing." -Phylis Diller

Like the time Bruce took the boys for the day and I spent the entire day cleaning and organizing the family room/play room, only to have my glorious 2 1/2 year old son dump the entire ash bucket all over the room the very next day. The ashes from the wood stove that were supposed to be dumped the week before by a certain someone {who is not me} I might add.

5 minutes. 5 minutes he was out of my sight, 5 minutes he was left to his own devices, whilst I cleaned another of the messes he had made upstairs in the bathroom. This is one of those messes that will take a LONG time to clean up. Ashes make A LOT of dust. Dust everywhere. And not just in the family room, nope it traveled all over the house. See why I have no time to get organized?