I'm a Fraud!

I feel like one, anyway. I have always been pretty strict about the way I want the kids' rooms to be kept, but just like thousands of parents and children before us, we do not always see eye to eye on the subject.

I talked to my friend Debbie about this once (Debbie, if you're reading this, I haven't forgotten you, really!) because I was having trouble getting Darcy to pare down the piles of books on her bed (you remember, the books that kept falling off her bunk and scaring us to death in the middle of the night!). Debbie advised me to let poor Darcy alone, saying that her bunk was "her own personal space." It seemed like good advice at the time and even though it drives Randy crazy to see all those stacks, I have to remind him once in a while that we can't even SEE what's up there so it certainly isn't contributing to the general clutter that sometimes populates the girls' room.

The problem is that we have simply outgrown this house. I just can't believe this house was ever meant to have six people living in it simultaneously (although, come to think of it, I suppose the Hoskins clan was able to make it work and that was before all the improvements we've made!). The reason I bring all this up is because today, for the umpteenth time, my girls came bopping into my room after they'd had THEIR room inspected by their dad, and they both just had the sunniest dispositions and were completely oblivious to the whirlwind that I call MY room! That's why I'm a fraud! I expect my kids to keep their rooms spic-and-span when you can hardly find the bed in my room!

Most of the time I am simply embarrassed by the way we treat things that we don't have a storage place for as "furniture" (for example, my scrapbooking bags, when stacked on top of one another, make a perfect end table!). Other days I get really depressed--I know I'm supposed to be content but I find it really hard sometimes. For instance, Peyton was born on May 8, 2000; Due to the close proximity of Mother's Day, Randy splurged and bought me a wonderful plush rocker and ottoman for the nursery. I loved that rocker (I still love it, actually) and used it with Sawyer, too, but once he graduated to a full-size bed, there was no place for the rocker. And I know that you all haven't seen our living room but it's just a little box so there's no room for the rocker in there. Consequently, it has been moved for the time being (and for the foreseeable future) into our room, where it currently acts as a third closet. And that's not because Randy and I are too lazy to put our clothes away (most of the time); no, it's because we are out of storage space in our closets, in our little armoire (emphasis on little), everywhere. When I do laundry and Randy carries it upstairs to our bedroom, he usually places the stack at the foot of the bed and works off of it rather than trying to squish/cram/force anything else into his drawer.

And heaven forbid you try to find something after a day or two--it gets so covered up by everything else that it's never seen or heard from again! There are piles of books stacked on every surface (and there are only a couple of surfaces to be found in our room) as well as all over the floor. There was one failed attempt of mine to keep books in baskets scattered about the room, but Randy complained that precious floor space was being taken up. There are so many books piled on the floor on my side of the bed, I trip over them in the dark every morning when I get up to work out. And while I claim that we don't have enough space, the truth is that we probably just have too much stuff.

Think I'm exaggerating? True story: A couple of weeks ago I got an "overdue" notice from the trash/recycling company, reminding me that my payment was needed by the first of September or they would have to suspend service to our residence. Now you're just going to have to take my word for this but I have a very elaborate system by which I pay my bills: Not only do I input the particulars of the bill received into my computer task (to do) list, complete with a reminder seven days in advance of the bill's due date, but I also have a file folder marked "Bills Pending" that I keep in my computer desk. Okay, so maybe that's not so elaborate but really, what else do you need? Anyway, when I got the overdue notice I immediately became inflamed (I hate to be accused of not paying a bill on time!) and turned to my files. Sure enough, no computer reminder and, more importantly, NO PAPER BILL in the pending file.

Why am I telling this story, you ask? Well, I'm getting to it. Next I called the trash company and told them that there had obviously been an oversight because I never received a bill for August, and I requested a copy of what they said they sent me. I received the bill the next day, and they very helpfully supplied an itemized list of all our bills and payments going back to 2005. What the . . .? Still, it provided me with ammunition because right there, in black and white, was my pristine record--never a late payment, no sirree Bob. So I fired off a letter to the company to send along with my payment (minus the $3 late fee they tried to tack on) and referred to my payment history, a copy of which I also included. And that, as they say, is that.

Only here's the rest of the story: The very day after I put that letter in the mailbox, guess what Randy walked downstairs holding in his hot little hand? Unless you're really slow, you saw this coming a mile away . . . that's right, it was a copy of our trash/recycling bill for August! How it got into our bedroom is the $64,000 question, but all I could do was laugh.