Sunday, October 18, 2009

"And they all lived together in a little crooked house..."


I'd like to tell you a little more about myself and introduce the cast of characters you may see mentioned from time to time in the blog.

I have two wonderful boys, C., who is 10, and E. who is 3 1/2.



C. is smart, social, and very funny. His current specialty is attempting to tell jokes. Example: "Your mother is so ugly that when she tried to enter an ugly pageant, they told her, 'No professionals.'

Well, maybe you had to be there.

E. is 3 1/2 going on.....31 1/2!!! He's very dominant. I call him "the administrator". He specializes in giving directions - "Shut the door! Turn the light off! Come here!" He adores his brother and follows him everywhere...in fact he rarely calls C. by his first name, having renamed him, "Brutherz."

And of course, there is Hubby P. Charming Hubby P. is a great daddy and actually very hands-on. He does his fair share and more of taking care of the boys, and does all of the outside maintenance of the house.

Which leaves me in charge of most of everything else. That doesn't mean I actually DO everything else, but I'm in charge of making sure it GETS DONE.

I guess I would have to say that my family is greatly the inspiration for this blog. Once upon a time, right after C. was born, I was looking at some photographs of myself pregnant. (If you have kids, you probably know what I mean - the pictures of your growing belly you take during your first pregnancy, but never during any subsequent pregnancy!) Any way, I was about four or five months pregnant in the photo, and after I finished reflecting on how I learned what big REALLY was by the time C. was born, I noticed something in the background of the photo....something I hadn't seen for a while at that point....

It was NEATNESS and ORDER. Along with the joy of the new arrival, the accumulation of all the gifts, baby equipment, the sheer volume of paper which started flooding the house, and my recent return to work, had caused chaos to begin to take hold. When I looked from the photo to the actual corner of the room, I felt appalled. And I felt that I had to find a way to bring that sense of physical order back again.

So from that point on I became a scholar of all things organizational. I combed the internet, the library, bookstores, magazines and my own brain for solutions, both short and long-term, to make my life a bit easier. Over the next year or so I designed, revamped, or reorganized our entire household. It remains an ongoing process.

The problem? Maintenance. The boys and Hubby P. love when things are organized, but they don't care to KEEP things organized, or do it themselves. ("Mommy? when are YOU going to straighten out that closet?") So many times I have to re-boot the systems, so to speak. And if you looked in my purse right now you would certainly wonder why I am writing a blog focused on organization! But because of the way I initially organized my purse, I know it's less than 10 minutes away from the restoration of order. That's the real-life confidence I hope to pass along to any one who needs a little support in ordering their corner of the world.

2 comments:

Yakini said...

Nice to meet the fam! :-)

Funny how you saw the neatness and order in the background like that. Sometimes it really does take that kind of reality check to spark any kind of change.

NOt sure your level of comfort, but I hope you post pics - of your preggers belly, of your organized home, of the kids, etc. :-)

Pat said...

Yakini -

Pics will be coming as the blog comes along! Thanks for reading!

Pat

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