Blogging with Liz's Reaction in Mind

I've been wondering how I could have become quite so bad at keeping things orderly. I like things put away. I don't like clutter. I don't like stacks and piles of things. Yet when I look about the house thats precisely what I see.

My life currently revolves around the 2-3 loads of laundry I do daily. I load, run, empty, reload, run and empty the dishwasher twice daily. I vacuum daily. You'd think this place would be spotless, but its a sty.

The fact is there is no way to keep up once I have been delivered the smallest of setbacks.

Last week Oliver crawled into our bed early one morning. Then he threw up all over our bed. Then he threw up in the bathroom, on the sofa, on a chair, on the floor, on his bed, and a little more on the floor for good measure. So I had a lot of sheets and blankets and pillows to wash and some floors to scrub .Oh, and some pajamas and clothes to wash. OK, but since I usually do 2-3 loads of laundry per day anyway this actually sets me back a week or so.

Oliver needs to vomit just as Laurel needs to pee. With one bathroom this means something will be hitting the floor. So add urine soaked clothing to the list of Things In Need Of Washing.

I try to remember to feed the fish. If the light in the tank is still out then no one has remembered. I get out the fish food just as more vomit occurs so I run into the other room, leaving the fish food on the ledge by the aquarium. You can't do that. The cats inexplicably like the fish food. So Walle and Paddington bat the fish food down and proceed to chaw on it until it opens a little and they can spread fish food all over the floor . So I have another mess to clean.

While I clean the fish food mess Griffin squirts half a tube of toothpaste down the already slowly draining bathroom sink.

While I try to deal with the sink I hear the soft thud of clothing falling. Paddington has taken to sleeping in closets. In order to access the closet shelves he must shimmy up the built in shelves then he reaches and grabs the overhead shelving and climbs up like an opossum, assuming thats how opossums do it. But, he doesn't actually fit up there. Not without knocking clothing out of his way. So our clothes are on the floor.

Oliver likes to curl up with an Lmax and play either School House Rock or Mr. Pencil's Learn to Write and Draw. However, he does not like to curl up anywhere. He likes to curl up in our bed. Without covers. So I can either make my bed 4000 times a day or I can just leave it in a depressing unmade heap the way Oliver likes it.

People have pointed out that I just need to explain to Oliver that he can't do that. While that works for most children, it does not work for Oliver. Special needs kids process things differently. There are some battles I will fight and I will do anything and everything to get him to understand. But unmaking beds, in the scheme of things, isn't such a big deal. Sure, the mess and disarray gets to me, but I also appreciate how far he has come.

Holden loves Legos. There are small Lego bits everywhere. I tried to cure the problem with an Elfa System storage unit. There are 2 small drawers for the mini figures and headlights and tiny wrenches and light sabers and helmets. There are two larger drawers for the bigger pieces, the knights and horses, the large tiles of castle pieces and trap doors. It helped a little. At first I thought it was Holden leaving the bits of Lego in every room. Until I saw the cats playing with them. I saw them! They were batting helmets to one another.

Oliver loves to write. I buy bulk packs of pads of paper at Costco and we blow through them. There is a down side to this. Oliver looks like a mad scientist, scribbling down words and flinging the used sheets of paper over his shoulder, his fingers trying to keep pace with his mind. I love that he writes. I love that he can suddenly show us whats going on. But the reams of paper all over the place can be disconcerting.

Griffin is a fan of trailing things. He likes to take parts of games and pieces of puzzles and trail them into different rooms. Game parts become sentimental and he will choose one or two to sleep with;- a fish from Fishin' Around, or a card from a Bingo game. Pieces and bits of things migrate to all sorts of unlikely places.


In the end I've realized I did not suddenly become bad at maintaining organization. I just can't do it by myself. Which is sort of unfortunate.

Maybe we should get a dog.