Organizing, Cleaning, and Scrounging for Sanity

When I quit teaching, someone asked me what I was going to do with my free time.  My answer was that I was going to clean the closet in our guest bedroom.  She pointed out to me that eventually all of my closets would be clean, and then I'd have to do something else.  However, knowing just how many closets and storage areas in our basement were crammed full of long-forgotten items and random things that didn't have a home, I felt good about the fact that it would be a long time before I got this mess I call my home straightened out and had to worry about what to do next.

The purging and organizing began with easy items. With each trip to Goodwill and the many trips to the trash and recycle bins, my house began to feel lighter. 

But things have drastically slowed down these last few days as I have developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder looking for missing game and puzzle pieces. For example, Ellie went through a phase where she would stack the deck with all the good picture pieces in the game Candy Land.  At some point, years ago, all of the good picture pieces went missing. I am happy to say, today they've been located in boxes of dried out Play-Doh, race tracks, and Legos.  It's too bad we don't have the game anymore since we discreetly trashed it when playing the game became too traumatic because all of the good pieces were gone.

Today I hit jackpot, or so I thought, when I found, mixed in with the 10,962 Duplo pieces stored in our basement, all of the white marbles from Hungry Hungry Hippo, the cherries from Hi Ho Cherri-O, and the pegs for the game Trouble.  Upon reassembly of these games, I've realized that while we do have all four blue pegs for Trouble, we are missing two yellow, one red, and one green.  Hi Ho Cherry-O isn't much better off - this summer's drought must have affected the cherry crop because we don't have enough cherries to fill the cherry trees equally, and as all of us moms know, "That's not FAIR!"  Two more games out to the trash.  I did manage to scrounge up enough marbles for Hungry Hungry Hippo, but that game will go into the Goodwill box because it's just too loud.  The kids have outgrown playing that game by the rules anyway, as they just like to see how hard they can slam the hippos tail-lever while marbles fly around the room and the pink hippo's neck breaks. 

And don't get me started on the puzzles!  Because they're educational, I thought I would be a good friend and pass along some of my kids' puzzles to a friend.  Most of the girl puzzles are in good shape, as Ellie has always been good about keeping her puzzles in tact.  However, the boy puzzles were apparently missing many pieces, and I started receiving texts from my friend stating, "Tate is killing us!" followed by picture texts of the Lightening McQueen puzzle and the Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle with one or two missing pieces.  Ugh!  The missing pieces are as bad as the flu  spreading from house to house.  This is not a good way to keep friends.

Before I lost a complete grip on my sanity earlier today scrounging through boxes, drawers, and couch cushions for the elusive Polly Pocket light blue sparkly pump while trying to avoid the sharp Lego pieces that always seem to hide in the carpet waiting to create a puncture wound in my foot, I decided if the game/puzzle/toy didn't look like it had all the necessary parts to function in a somewhat normal way, it was going to the trash.  And, as long as I get the games out of the house before the kids come home from school today and then bury them deep in the garbage can underneath real trash, all will be well in my house.