Teenagers and Tiaras

My thirteen year old daughter is such a girl.

My beautiful daughter!

Growing up, I was a bit of a tomboy and I guess I still am. I just never got into the make-up and jewelry. I've never worn a pair of high heels and I'm pretty sure that the last time I wore a dress was on my wedding day.

But my daughter is the complete opposite. Her room is just stuffed beyond it's capacity with "girly" stuff. There are clothes, jewelry, and make-up all over the room. It looks like an Ulta, and the Icing next door, exploded in her room. She has too much stuff.

To make matters worse, it doesn't just stay in her room. It's all over the house. It's on the back of the bathroom sink, the kitchen counter, the entertainment center, in our cars, and anywhere else she frequents.

I swear, she walks through the front door when she get home from school and things just start dripping off of her. Her backpack and anything else she was carrying is dropped just past the front door. The shoes come off in the kitchen, then the socks in the den. As she proceeds through the house, miscellaneous items drop off her like leaves falling from a tree.

To make matters worse our 18 month boy, who is naturally fascinated by all her glittery stuff, picks up the miscellaneous stuff and scatters it further around the house. Oooooh, "shiny"!

And then she wonders why she can't find her stuff when she's looking for it.

Now my daughter is an intelligent and very talented young lady. But, she tends to be totally oblivious to the world around her. Like, she runs into walls and trips over air she's so oblivious. Now, she does have a mild case of Cerebral Palsy which contributes to her falling down. But, I swear it's at least 50% just not paying any attention to her surroundings. She can leave a pair of shoes in the middle of the room and never see them again. She can walk past them for days and never notice them. She will only pick them up when she either needs them and starts looking for them or I point them out and tell her to pick them up.

So, how do I fix this? I really don't like having to tell her to pick up her stuff and clean her room all the time. I have scrounged around the internet and found a few ideas that would help in her room at least, if not the rest of the house. And maybe, just maybe, if she had a better place to put things, she might actually put them there. I know, wishful thinking!

I think this magnetic make up storage would be great:

And who would have thought of using cutlery trays or ice trays for jewelry? Awesome ideas, now to actually do it!

(Sources:http://laurathoughts81.blogspot.com/2011/03/make-up-magnet-board.html;http://beadup.blogspot.com/2010/04/fashionably-friday-jewelry-holders.html; http://www.maillardvillemanor.com/2011/07/cutlery-tray-for-jewelry.html

A Merry Cluttermas?

I went into Christmas this year with good intentions. My four kids were only going to get a few gifts they would really use. I was going to do my best to not add to the disaster that is our house. I really wanted our focus to be more on the real meaning of Christmas and not the "stuff". It did not work out as planned.

Where did it go wrong?

First of all, I didn't take into consideration that we are not the only ones that buy our children gifts. We have grandparents, brothers, cousins, and friends who also give gifts. Some do better than others. Some do very well and buy things my children truly use. But some have totally forgotten what it was like to have small children in the house and pick the one thing in the store that makes tons of noise and has no "off" button. Unfortunately, my children use these too. In fact, they tend to leave these kind of toys right front of the bathroom, so that I step on it at three o'clock in the morning and have no way of shutting the dang thing up.

I can totally tell that Chinese toy makers only have one child. Toys seem to get more and more obnoxious every year. They are either ridiculously loud with no volume control or off button, have a million hard little pieces that get stepped on and kill your feet, or they have parts, or even worse clothes, that little hands just can't seem to work and they need you to help them play with it. I swear it's the Chinese getting revenge on us for owing them so much money.

I've tried removing the batteries, when I can find our tiny little baby screwdriver set that never seems to be where it should be. But, children today are pretty tech savvy and either they figure out how to replace them or they get one of the older kids to do it. Then, I sit down to watch TV and can't figure out why the TV won't turn on. Of course, the batteries are gone out of the remote.

Second, not only do we have relatives that are kind and generous enough to purchase our children presents, a couple of our children also, despite our best attempts not to, end up each year on charity gift giving lists such as Angel Tree, etc.

A little history is required here. Only one of our four children came the normal way. You know, I got knocked up, then got married, and then gave birth. The other three have come a not so normal way. Someone else got knocked up but, was unable to care for their children, and God saw fit to send them our way.

Two of our children are adopted and a third is in the process of being adopted. And, because the two youngest came from the CPS/Foster Care system, some well-meaning person somewhere puts my already spoiled-rotten children on some "needy" list. I have managed to remove my children from a couple of these lists but, we apparently got added to a couple of new ones last Christmas with the new baby. I do appreciate the thought and I'm sure the vast majority of kids on these lists are actually in need of Christmas presents. However, my children have more than they could possibly need.

I'm not going to be rude and refuse these well-meaning, good people's gifts. And once the children have opened the presents, I'm not going to be some "Mommy Dearest" and immediately take their new toys away. But, it results in way too much.

So, I will do as any good mother does. I will wait. Then, someday, in the not too distant future, but long enough for them to not really remember everything they got, I will go into their bedrooms when they're not home and remove a few carefully selected toys (generally the noisy ones or the "foot-killers") from their mess and place them in a black trash bag and take them directly out to the trash. They'll never even notice they're their gone. That's how many toys they have.

I know, I know! I should take them to Goodwill or some place like that. But there's a drawback in that. I have to box them up and then the box has to sit somewhere waiting until I have time to get to the Goodwill. During that time, I have a high risk of getting busted. Some kid is going to look in the back my car or the hall closet and say, "Hey, what are you doing with my toys in this box?" It's a risk I'm unwilling to take. And, quite frankly, no one, not even people that shop at Goodwill, needs a toy you can't turn off.

What can I do next year to make it different? I have no idea! I thought I had it under control this year.

A Chicken in Every Pot and a Dumpster in my Front Yard - A Story of Excess

During the Presidential Campaign of 1928, an ad placed by the Republican National Committee in several newspapers and a pamphlet described how the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge had "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot.' And a car in every backyard, to boot." The ad concluded that a vote for Hoover would be a vote for continued prosperity. This promise of prosperity was promptly derailed several months later by the stock market crash of 1929 which plunged the country into the Great Depression. (hoover.archives.gov)

Today, we are having our own financial crisis in this country. A few months ago the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report which stated that a record 46.2 million persons, or roughly 1 out of every 7 Americans, were poor in 2010.

But what is "poor" in America today? It's certainly not what it was in the Great Depression.

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:

• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• 43 percent have Internet access.
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed:

• 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food.
• 83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat.
• 82 percent of poor adults reported never being hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.(http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor)

I would propose that the whole reason for the current financial crisis is the very attitude stated in that quote often mistakenly attributed to Hoover. That we all deserve a "chicken in every pot and car in every yard". I can understand the chicken, but the car?

Everyone had stretched their paychecks to the limit with too much house, too much car, and maxed out credit cards. And it finally all caught up with us. Basically, it was our "stuff" that put the nail in the coffin of our economy.

Personally, our finances are the one place that I am fairly organized. But I, too, am guilty of excess. Part of our organization problem is simply too much stuff. The one thing the "organized" types have right is that you can't organize clutter.

So, I am doing my best this year to de-clutter and to make do with less. I'm trying to go with the 80/20 theory. For example, if I only wear 20% of my clothes 80% of the time, do I really need the other 80%? Maybe a few pieces, but not ALL of it. If I use the waffle maker once a year, is it worth taking up room in the kitchen cabinets? If I need a pair of scissors or a pen, I never can find one because there is too much other crap in the way of finding them.

So, my first step in getting organized is a massive purging of stuff. I have literally had a dumpster delivered to my front yard. I'm not sure I could do the whole "minimalist" thing, but I would like to be able to find my keys in the morning. The next step is to stop bringing so dang much stuff in the house!

I know I "should" have a garage sale, put things on Craigslist, or take things to charity. But it will never actually happen if I do it that way. So, dumpster it is. Let the purging begin! Well, when it warms up a little.

Confessions of a Disorganized Mom

I really like to write and I think I'm pretty good at it. My husband has been pushing me to write for years.

So, for 2012, my big resolution was to "start writing".

But, like most of my previous years resolutions, it hasn't gone so well. I'm in the second week of the year and have written an entire two paragraphs. And those two paragraphs are lost somewhere on my computer because I'm not sure what I named the file.

My "start writing" resolution seemed like a really good idea when I made it. But, it turns out, it's a little vague. What am I going to write about??? I have a government degree (which I've never actually used), so it seemed like a good idea to write about politics and the sorry state our country is in. I could really stick it to those Commie Leftists and there sucky politics that are destroying our great country. But, somehow the blank page I stared at wouldn't cooperate with that idea.

This morning, I woke up early, determined to write. I didn't care what it was about, just write SOMETHING! So, I'm quietly sneaking around the house at 4:30 in the morning, trying desperately not to wake up my dear children, determined to write. Then I hit a snag in my plan. I could find my completely dead laptop, but not the cord. I could find paper, but no pens. I found pencils but they were all broken and I couldn't find a sharpener.

For 45 minutes, I looked for something to write WITH! Is that not ridiculous? It drives me crazy. And while I'm searching, my brain keeps going to the movie "Friday". I've always laughed the hardest at the part where they talk about having Kool-aid but no sugar, peanut butter but no jelly, ham but no burger. I laugh because it's the story of my life and I'd rather laugh than cry. I did finally find the laptop cord. You know where it was? Where it goes, in the bottom of my laptop case! I didn't even think to look there until desperation took over.

So, here you have it - my confession. I'm completely, hopelessly disorganized. I couldn't find my ass half the time if it wasn't attached. Is there just something fundamentally wrong with me? Maybe it's genetic, my Mom and Dad are pretty disorganized, too. That's a good excuse but it doesn't fix the problem.

To make the problem even worse, my husband and children are also disorganized. It's chaos in my house. Trying to get four kids dressed, fed, and out the door in the mornings would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. There's always at least one missing shoe or someone doesn't have clean socks. They probably do have clean socks, but they are all in a huge basket of clean clothes that haven't been folded and no one has time to dig and find the matching set.

I've made New Years Resolutions of "get organized" in the past, but I end up still just as disorganized and feel like a failure, too. But, once again, that's on my list of resolutions. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

I'm not sure how other people do it. I've read all the "self-help" books. I'm sure they are still around here somewhere, but have no idea where. I read the "organization" blogs. Those women just piss me off with their crafty, skinny, cutesy little selves. I don't have time to sew some cute little caddy to hang over the door and I couldn't find my sewing machine if I did. The problem with organization blogs is they are written by people who are organized.

But...maybe, just maybe, if I combine the two resolutions into one and write about my attempt this year to "get organized", maybe things will be different.

I really haven't thought this out very well and haven't had enough coffee this morning to make important decisions. But, if nothing else, I guess you guys can get a good laugh this year at my attempts to get organized. So, here we go with Brook's 2012 attempt to "get organized" and "start writing"....

P.S. Give me some grace, I'm new at this!