Purging

This weekend I am hosting a baby shower at my home. While that sounds fun, the process involved in getting ready for the event is not so fun. I like my home to be neat with every little piece of lint in it's place. Seriously. And while this is not a bad thing, it is when you are a total slob and also have 2 very small children who run wild and free throughout your home everyday tearing it apart.

Like most people I waited until the last moment to start the cleaning process....and yes it is a process. I mean why pick up earlier when the house will just be destroyed again 10 minutes later. So I waited until tonight to begin to straighten up my home so it can be cleaned tomorrow morning bright and early. Then I will just have to keep my little hooligans out of the house until the party....."who wants to go to Target and the bookstore and Mimi's house, who wants to eat out, who wants ice cream after dinner, who wants to ride around until they fall asleep in the car and then be carried into bed?" Okay so I am not going to do all those things, but that is seriously what it would take to keep a house clean for over 24 hours these days. And besides keeping the kids out, I would also have to lock Josh and I out until at least an hour before the shower began. We are that bad people.

But back to my point (I won't say I digress because everyone blogs that term lately), my point being that as I looked around to begin the picking up portion of the cleaning process I wanted to scream. For the first time I realized how many toys we own and are taking up residence in this house. So many that we are literally shitting toys, I mean anytime you ass touches any kind of surface in this house you are more than likely to sit on something that squeaks, cries, rolls, moves or makes some other hideous noise. Really....has my life come to this, the house with too many toys? The mom who can't say no, the mom who gives in and buys crap, the mom who spoils her kids. Then I realized no that isn't me at all. I am the mom who cannot throw a damn thing away. Well I can, but not perfectly good, working toys that have all the pieces. And I also realized that while I did buy a large portion of these toys, an even larger portion of them were gifts. For the love of all things holy in the world.....DO NOT buy my kids anymore freakin' toys!

We have toys in every room in my house from my bathroom, to the kitchen and every room in between. The kids rooms each have at least 2 baskets fulls with more on the floor and the toy room looks like a toy walk in closet that you can't exactly walk in. The sight of the toys wanted to make me scream. So I did what any irrational, insane mother with too little sleep would do. I grabbed several large bags and started filling them up. I didn't even look back. I didn't care if the toy was brand spankin' new or 2+ years old. I didn't care if it had all the pieces or was broken in shambles. If I hadn't seen the kids play with it in the last five minutes it was history, okay so not the last five minutes, but the last five months. I filled up five garbage bags faster than rice cereal turns into paste.

I just started walking around aimlessly in my home throwing toys in the bags.

"Momma what you doing? Momma you cleaning up?"

"Yep, I'm putting these toys away!"

"Momma I want dat" trying to pull a random toy she hasn't touched in months out the bag

"Nope we are giving these to the poor kids" grabbing the bags from her toy crazed hands

"Da poor kids" trying to peek inside the coveted bags

"Yep"

"like Adayn"

"Sure we can give all this crap to Adalyn, I'm sure Mrs. Katey would love it"

So tonight my friends Josh and I picked up for over 3 hours and after several bags for the trash and several bags for the good will, my house and my soul are feeling much better. And again I beg of you, if you feel the need to buy or give my child a gift... how about socks, we can never find two of those that match!