Redecorating - Kid Style

Ever since I have known Bill (18+ years now) he has never held a traditional "9-5" type job. He has always worked odd hours, weekends, nights and 24-hour shifts. Being the fiercely independent female that I am this has rarely bothered me and in fact it seems quite normal to me as I know nothing different. Most weekends Bill is at work for 24 hours on either Saturday or Sunday. I usually like to try to take that day to clean, de-clutter and do laundry. That way when Bill returns home he, with luck, returns to one that is neat, orderly and clean. This weekend was no different as Bill worked yesterday.

I was a woman on a mission yesterday. In only a little over a week's time the amount of paper (school things, receipts, bills, junk mail not gone through and newspapers) that had piled up in our kitchen, dining room and living room was frightening. I will say with Anna in Kindergarten our school papers have easily doubled. And because the kids are at two different schools this means a lot of duplicated pieces of school/district related announcements. Ugh. I spent quite a bit of time sorting, recycling and filing. Let's just say I am convinced that in some way paper is a close cousin to bunnies given the way it seems to "reproduce."

After getting the main area of the house in shape I headed back to the bedrooms for clean sheets and de-cluttering. I started out with Ryan's room. Upon stripping his bed I was horrified to look along the side next to the wall and see nothing but a sea of food wrappers! They consisted of Halloween candy, yogurt stick wrappers, beef jerky wrappers and granola bar wrappers (along with partially eaten bars). I had to use a broom to get everything out. Why oh why do boys do things like this? I told him he is darn lucky that he didn't have bugs or mice living with him in there. Yuck!

I moved on to Anna's room and it was here I discovered the first "redecorating." It seems Anna had added some colors to her pink wall next to her bed. Then something on the floor caught my eye and I noticed she now had green marks on her blue carpet (I should note Anna's bedroom had blue carpet when we bought the house and since it was in perfectly good shape we couldn't see replacing it until later . . . now I am very glad we didn't). I don't know if it is marker or ink from her stamper ink pads and when asked she gave me a blank look which I equated to, "If I just say nothing what can mom possibly do?"

After my bedroom it was time to tackle the vacuuming in the living room/dining room and kitchen. As I was vacuuming the tan carpet in the living/dining room my eyes were first drawn to blue on the carpet in quite a large area. Lots of blue spots. Upon closer inspection I noticed sparkly glitter in the blue color. How lovely. Ryan claims it was from Anna's latest art project, Anna pleaded the fifth. However not long after she quickly pointed out to me the red smiley face that was drawn on the carpet near the dining room table. This was followed by "Ryan did it." I still haven't solved that one.

I don't know what makes me more frustrated at this point. The fact that Bill and I bust our butts at our jobs so we can have this house (a house I might add that is not a fancy one, it is a rather ordinary house but still it is OURS) and that Ryan and Anna seem to have so little disregard for it. Or the fact that how in the heck did I miss all this? I am sure it didn't miraculously appear overnight on Friday night so just how long has this stuff been here? I would love to redecorate, would love new carpet but with the economy as it is this will not be happening any time soon.

So I guess I shall have to live with the "redecorating - kid style." Big sigh. . . .