This is the Thanks I Get???

I have been working my tail end off today, I just want to make that clear right now. I was up at 7:30 (and that means I slept in!) and only just now stopped to catch my breath. In fact, I didn't eat lunch until 3:15 and that was only because my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't do anything else until I got some calories in my body!

Randy took the kids to play tennis this morning (yes, I got left behind AGAIN) and then went in to work; he had a change of plans when he got the call that some suits he bought yesterday had been altered and were ready to be picked up. He came back home to change his socks (so he could try his suit pants on and make sure they fit properly) and Sawyer sweet-talked his way into going along for the ride. All this time I was working like a dog, but evidently Randy and I have two very different ideas about what "cleaning the house" means, because when he came home with his suits he said, "I thought you were going to clean the house." Grrrrr.

I blame Darcy and Peyton. That's it, that's all there is to it. They are pack rats and sentimental saps. (I love you, girls!) They can't throw anything away!!! A few weeks ago we bought a couple of those cubicle-type systems with the felt cubes that slide inside, and they are just as cute as they can be. As luck would have it, we were able to find cubes in the very pretty shades of pastel pink (Peyton's favorite color) and lime green (Darcy's fave). I staggered the cubes and it has made a world of difference in their room, if only I can convince them to stick to the system that I set up! See, we bought the cubicles a few weeks ago but Randy only had time to put one of them together, so I went ahead and assigned each girl three cubes apiece (they now have six apiece to call their own) and organized them in such a way that everything (at the time) had its own place. But because Randy didn't get around to the other cubicle thingy until today, their room was sort of in limbo and I was beginning to think it was just another good idea gone bad.

 

Perhaps my girls will one day take after me, but it is clear to me that they do not value orderliness and organization as I do! Their room is a DREAM to me! I know I'm not doing them any favors by breaking down and straightening/organizing everything when it gets to the point that they can't find anything, but I suppose I just want them to see (for the hundredth time) what their room COULD look like if only they would put things away when they're finished with them! How hard is that? But the biggest problem is that they save literally EVERYTHING--scraps of paper with notes written on them; worksheets from Bible class; dime store trinkets; it's all sacred. And it makes me crazy!

Plus, there are always piles of books everywhere because the girls outgrew their bookshelf space, oh, the day we gave them a bookcase! Until about three days ago Darcy's bed could always be found with a stack of books 15-high perched precariously at the end, but Randy grew so weary of being awakened by a big "BANG" in the middle of the night when the books toppled from the top bunk to the ground that he finally told her she could only have ONE book on her bed at a time. Do you realize how cruel that is for a girl like her who is always reading four books at a time? It's just not fair!

Anyway, you can see in the picture that before we found the cubicles I bought some boxes with cute pink butterfly lids for the girls to organize even more "stuff" in--jewelry, crayons/pencils/markers, the aforementioned trinkets, etc. The best part about each girl having six felt cubes of her own is that we were able to clear out one of their under-the-bed drawers so that now Darcy and Peyton EACH have their own drawer! Oh happy day! They have been wearing the same six or so outfits all summer because they were too lazy (Did you hear me? I love you, girls!) to dig into the mound of rubble that was their clothing drawer to find anything new to wear--they would just take their clean laundry, pile it on top and pick it right back out again. Now they can actually SEE what they own!