Stahlke Adoption

The Dreaded Question

There are several things about motherhood that are much bigger issues than I ever expected. One of the prominent ones is finding places for the myriad papers and things that now enter our house. We didn't used to store rollerblades, toys, school papers, artwork, etc. It takes time and imagination to process all this stuff, especially since I prefer to recyle and not throw things away.

The children's artwork, for example, is voluminous from "sermon drawing" alone, let alone all the other sources. (I sometimes wonder if Pastor Rogers gets distracted, since our family sits in the front row on the pulpit side!) While waiting in a doctor's office, I got a good idea about processing artwork from a parenting magazine. After collecting the children's artwork for the whole school year, I put it out on a table, and they choose their ten favorite items. I sort through the rest for any ones that Jonathan and I want to keep, then the rest gets used as gift-wrapping paper.

While the artwork problem is now solved, the master bedroom serves as the dumping ground for all the things that don't yet have a permanent home for storage. And whenever something enters the house that I don't want the children to see, like gifts in the mail, it immediately goes into our bedroom. Pile by pile, I'm tackling the overflow, but it's slow going.

We've been cleaning our house the last few days, since Jonathan's parents will be visiting us soon. Tonight the kids must clear their bedroom floors enough for me to vacuum. Cleaning is especially hard for Misha, who as our biggest art-lover, has the largest collection of "projects" (mostly from the recycle bin) in his room. He also has trouble parting with anything, probably since at one time he lost all his material possessions.

It finally happened--the question I've known would come sooner or later. Misha asked it--
"Mom, if we have to clean our rooms, why don't you?"

posted by Stahlkes @ 1:15 PM