A Tsunami of Stuff

Everyone knows that spring is when you’re supposed to get the mad urge to clean your house like a maid hopped up on 4 Grande Double Shot Espressos, but I’ve never been one to follow trends. I’m sure you’re shocked, right? (You need to work on a more believable disbelief expression.)

For me, there’s something about January that makes me want to purge and organize. Is it because I’m tired of being stuck in the house, staring at the same four walls jammed with accumulated crap? Maybe. Is it because indoor chores are much more fun to accomplish when it’s 20 degrees outside? Perhaps. Is it because spring is when we run screaming out of our houses to get away from our winter fueled cabin fever? Most likely. Whatever the reason, by the end of January, I’m itching to dive into “spring” cleaning.

The problem though, is that there’s a literal tsunami of stuff in my house. If I start to think of all the rooms, closets, drawers, desks, nooks and crannies that need to be cleaned out and organized, I start to hyperventilate a little. And everyone knows that you need to hyperventilate into a paper bag so when I go into the drawer to get one, I’ll see all THAT clutter and hyperventilate twice. (Re-ventilate? Hyper hyperventilate?) If you start to do the mental math on how many spaces there are that need to be tackled, the task becomes too overwhelming. I start to lose motivation. No seriously, motivation just starts seeping out of me. It’s kinda gross if you’re sitting too close to someone actively losing motivation. Try to carry wet wipes on your person at all times just for this very situation.

Wait, where was I again?

Hyperventilating….yadda yada yadda….losing motivation….yadda yadda yadda…

Oh right.

Once I lose the motivation by making mountains out of my completely respectable molehills, it usually results in a few weeks of being too overwhelmed to even pick a place to start on before I pull myself up by my boot straps, stop my whining and get down to business. Sometimes I need bootstraps AND big girl panties to deal with severe motivation loss.

Well, this week is my bootstraps week. My big girl panties wearing, get my act together, and get organized week. That’s right folks. I’m finally pulling my head out of that awful place where the sun doesn’t shine.

So now that I have a plan in place on where to start this monumentally huge task of getting rid of all the crap that I don’t want to keep storing in my home, I need to give myself a mental pep talk. Because the reality is, there are somethings that I cannot part with for any reason. Even though I KNOW that the reasons I have for keeping it may be stupid and illogical, it doesn’t seem to affect the process.

For example: While re-arranging my youngest son’s room this past weekend, I decided to clean out his bookshelf. At nine years old now, I’m pretty sure he can find the ducky. There were a stack of old Nick Jr. books that I have had since my oldest child. These things have to be over 2 decades old now. They aren’t even culturally relevant anymore. He has no idea who “Little Bill” or “Oswald” even are, considering those were popular shows 20 years ago. These things are older than him and two of his siblings.

Yet I can’t seem to make myself get rid of them.

These are books that have been passed down through all 4 of my children. ALL FOUR. I can look at these books and remember those chubby little toddler hands turning three pages at a time, babbling nonsense as they “read” the words. Man, are you getting hit in the feels as hard as I am? Geez. I think I need a moment here. That was a pretty strong emotion. I’m not sure where that cold hearted bitch went that used to reside in my body but she didn’t seem to cry or have all these pesky feelings that I do. I really miss her. But I digress. (AGAIN? Twice in one story? Get your crap together!) Oh wait, never mind, I found her.

In the end, I put the books back on his shelf. Even though they really are kindergarten age appropriate and he’s way too old for them. My husband laughed at my reluctance to part with these orange beacons of childhoods’ past and asked if we were just going to keep them for the grandkids. That’s a good enough excuse as any, right?

Provided I can bear to part with this clutter, (Wait, is this how hoarders are born? Do I need an intervention?) I hope to be much lighter of spirit. And stuff. Mostly stuff.

Okay coach, I’m ready. Put me in the game.

Need more mayhem? I can be found, occasionally, on that there FaceBook (modernmommayhem) and over on Intagram (@modernmommayhem).

Want to send me a dirty limerick to add to my impressively sad collection of only 1 dirty limerick? Send an email to modernmommayhem@gmail.com.