#40bagsin40days: I'ma do this so hard

I'm going to do this. Just like two years ago when I was, for all intents and purposes, scary close to a nervous breakdown, this needs to be done.

A mommy friend posted the link to the blog "White House Black Shutters" on Facebook and I read the post and went "Huh. Interesting." I was in between yelling at one kid and pleading with another when I read the entry. Bad behavior ran amuck today. I let them eat the remaining 18 or so packs of fruit snacks from a box we bought Monday and promised to wake Charlie up if she fell asleep in the chair watching TV and then promised I was going to get my ass pre-birthday drunk because, damn it, I deserve all those drinks.

So. Today royally sucked.

And then, mid-tantrum (mine, not theirs), I looked at the living room, glanced at the front room and hit the roof when I looked at the kitchen counters.

 Out came the notebook and pen:

Pen, meet notebook ... and glass and laptop.

And a list was born because, let's face it, my life is never organized enough and when I don't have a list everything is chaotic. My life. My kids. My house. My brain. Hell, even my hair doesn't know what to do when I let go and stop making lists.

Here's the list. It's time for my first ever #40bagsin40days challenge. The clutter will be overcome. I have my list. I won't lose my ambition. I may clean and declutter under the influence once in a while because this is Lent and God himself knows I won't give up my alcohol. I'll give up the mess and the chaos, but leave your holy hands off my wine.

Now that I've started I should forewarn my loved ones. It's happening. Boy, I'm sorry. I said I would hold onto your jeans from college and right after college because you were going to use our gym membership and fit into them again ... but you don't use our membership. You ran up and down the two flights of stairs in our house tonight and were thoroughly winded. We'll work on that. But first, I'm tired of cleaning around that box in the closet. The box I moved here last fall. The box I moved around in the closet at the old house. It's time to let it go.

Really, just ...

College Me, I know how much you LOVE some of those ratty T-shirts you just can't seem to part with. You're going to try for real this time. An honest to goodness try, Past Me. You may even get as far as putting them in a bag this time instead of just piling them up and eventually moving them to a different drawer. But it's OK to let them go. Really. I promise.

Mommy Me ... no we aren't getting rid of the baby clothes yet so you can stop that train right here.

I did start this challenge today and that's the biggest step. That's one thing all the parts of me can be certain of. I made that list and I looked at my house and cried because I'm tired - but more than the exhaustion of trying to keep up, staying up too late to get it all done and the being mentally worn out because of not being able to be Super Mom (we've talked about how much I am NOT her in the past), I'm tired of using those excuses to not fold up the blankets the kids have thrown on the floor again. I'm kind of tired of telling myself I'll get to something later and later coming MONTHS later. That's bullshit and I'm only psychologically bringing myself closer to another round of "Am I crazy or is that really a ghost standing in my living room." (Answer: It's usually a ghost. I'm very much not crazy in the traditional sense.)

Let me give you a glimpse into what I've been looking at for weeks, what's been eating away at the very center of my soul. Some of my friends would believe this is a totally normal condition or state for my home to be in, but in my head it's not. It can't be and I won't let it be.

Here, your glimpse:

No office yet, so this is a dinner table/office/desk/bill-pay area. *barf*

Holy fuck. To a lot of people this isn't bad. But remember it's only one small counter top in the kitchen. I had four other areas that were (to me) just as cluttered. This picture gives me anxiety.

This one, however, makes me calm:

So.Much.Better.

The pile on the left is my husband's pile of random shit he needs to go through and then move the hell off my counter. The pile on the right is actually the first part of a manuscript I'm editing, a stack of CDs I need to put in the car and Tara Sivec's "Watch Over Me," which I just started reading the other night. Tomorrow, that pile will disappear and travel with me to my mom and dad's very organized house where I will once again feel at peace with my shattered soul (because I'm not Super Mom).

I posted all my before and after photos from today on my Facebook page (personal, I don't have one associated with the blog ... but if there's demand for one, I'd do it) and between the first set of photos and the second, my attitude changed right along with the amount of shit cluttering my space. There's something truly uplifting about getting rid of things I don't need. At this point it's just been getting rid of recyclables and trash items that built up and took over my counters. In the next 39 days, I'll be giving bags of clothes (there's already one ready to go) and quite possibly toys to the Rescue Mission. Stuff will be taken to church (yeah, despite my cursing and imbibing I do in fact attend a real church) for the annual rummage sale. I'll be organizing this house like I've been wanting to since we decided to move here.

Honestly, I may even break my new "no credit card unless for gas" rule in order to really get a handle on things like the girls' play area(s) and the crafty/fabric stuff.

Now, since I already made this kitchen look gawd damn amazing, I'm just going to go put my feet up, drink this wine and celebrate the beginning of Lent and ... yay Jesus!

You know you want to say it, too. Go on. Say it. Yay Jesus!

It's so Pintrest (un)worthy

Yesterday was the furthest thing from what our society deems "Pintrest Worthy," despite how awesome my ham broccoli braid looked before and after it was baked.

It's like the moment my feet hit the floor the Goob had it out for me. I went to shower and get ready to go to the gym (yeah, I shower prior to getting sweated up) only to come downstairs and smell ... something. Definitely a smell from my primary school years. So familiar I could almost taste it.

Rubber cement. Only not. Vinyl patch glue. More like it.

All over her hands. On the carpet. On the kitchen floor.

I was more mad than anything because I was afraid, at first glance - she had her hands in a prayer pose - that it was super glue and it flashed through my mind that 1) I have no idea the quickest way to the hospital from here and 2) there's no way I would have gotten her safely in the carseat if her hands were glued together.

You've never seen someone have a full on conniption fit until you've witnessed a raving 31-year-old mother dealing with a glue covered child who thinks she's just "washing" her hands with some stinky soap.

Acquired fire hazards (aka: shit people give you)

There are a lot of things I didn't do before packing up and moving.

• That giant box of old papers I wanted to go through? Sitting in the front room.
• Clothes that should have been sorted and sent to the Rescue Mission? Scattered throughout three rooms.
• Old computer monitors/printers/cables I wanted him to find new homes for? Currently surrounding me in the basement office area.
• The Popular Science mags I begged him to sort and toss 16 months ago? Still in the same box they sat in at the other house, only now at this house. And still pissing me off.
• The filing cabinet that holds next to no important papers because they're all in the box upstairs in the front room? Still haven't sorted through the junk we're keeping in there.

 It's an epidemic.

Clutter bug adjustment period

It's done, mostly.

We've been living in the new house for a little more than a week and it's been an adjustment. The kids have been fine going from sharing a room to having their separate corners to fight from. My husband has been fine coming back to the home he spent his adolescence in. I'm the one still trying to adjust, despite calling this house home.

It's me. It's always me.

But this time I know what's holding me back and it's the clutter.

Clean freak chronicles: In a Lysol haze

I've been kind of secretive about plans to move. Or at least, after some careful thought and a strategically made Facebook post, that's the way it may appear to some.

Truthfully, I just haven't turned to social media with all my joy/panic moments over the decision because we (Boy Wonder and I) never sat down and did a serious house hunt.

But here it is — after almost five years in this house, we're moving on. It's happening slowly, because if I make a big move and do it too quickly I'll fall apart, and I can't afford to do that all over again. Moving into our current home was almost too much to bear and the clutter utterly consumed me. A lot of days it still does, but that's primarily because we don't have enough space for the amount of things we have. I've been making great strides to cut back on the material things here that are just pure crap we don't need to hold onto, but I can only do so much when we only get 24 hours each day to accomplish what's on my list. And that list is long.

In search of positivity and space

I took a break — from here, from the gym, from feeling like a useful member of society.

In all honesty, I needed it. The morning after my last entry, I packed the kids in the car and took off for my parents house about two hours away. We only stayed a couple days, but it was enough to make me realize things weren't going as planned around here. I was truly beginning to feel overwhelmed again. If you've been keeping up with me and my stories, you know this feeling started a while ago and I've been trying to get back on track. Bad weather and bad attitudes (mine and Josie's, which has likely been caused by mine) have been blamed.

So has the furniture, the dog, the car, the money ... You get the picture.

I decided earlier this week to nip it in the bud. We've been talking about what we need to do to fix the house up and potentially sell it and that has put me in full on "show ready" homeowner mode. I sent an unused television stand home with my parents on a recent visit and then took the baker's rack down — we used it to hold bath towels and toiletries in the bathroom — and repurposed a basket already in the bathroom for the newly homeless towels.

The winds of change are blowing in a meltdown

Sometime in the wee hours of todayness, I turned 31.

I've been legally allowed to purchase and drink alcohol for a decade, and have known my husband just as long.

Damn, I feel kind of old.

It doesn't help much that my uterus feels lonely and the baby fever is spiking. The kids tearing the hell out of the house this morning, Charlie falling and bruising her face and Josie refusing to put real clothes on until nearly 1 p.m. isn't even swaying the want of another squish.

No worries, though. Despite wanting another, I think I need to wait a little longer before we travel that road again. Like, when I'm 31 and a half we can talk about it.

Hopefully I'm out of my funk by then.

The last week I've been in shut down mode — I haven't touched my list, I keep seeing things that need to be done and not doing them, I've lost my temper more times than I can count and I just want to curl up in a ball and watch "Sleepless in Seattle" on repeat.

Dear June, a little inspiration please

June Cleaver, I am not.

But, damn it, I try real hard.

Since making the decision to stay home and focus on raising our babies, things have been less than perfect in my mind, though. I seem to apologize to Boy Wonder on an almost daily basis. Envision this scenario:

He walks through the front door and is immediately met with, "I didn't get a chance to pick up the living room. Dinner is cold. I kicked the dog and drank all the beer. Today SUCKS!" (OK, I didn't actually drink the beer, but some days it definitely crosses my mind ... a lot.) And then I stomp off because he says, "It's OK. You think I'm worried about it and I'm not," instead of commiserating with me or getting upset.

My husband is freaking amazing and ridiculously laid back a majority of the time. He gives me the time I need to be pissed off at my lack of organization, letting me rant and rave about all the things on my "to do" list that haven't gotten done and then when the kids are in bed we pick up the house together, he sets up the coffee maker and I get a few hours of restless sleep.