Order, Disorder, and the Random Stages Inbetween
I’m not sure if I’m just a disorganized person, or if I’ve had disorder imposed upon me by life. It does seem that I spend a great deal of time cleaning, sorting and arranging things. I do a good job of getting things where I want them, orderly, and it stays that way for about two hours, three tops. After that, a horde of other people come in behind me and start digging through, pulling out, tossing around, and leaving things where they lie.
Getting things accomplished in the midst of the chaos is a difficult thing. Every task takes me longer because I stop to pick up toys, dirty clothes, pens, pencils, and random clutter along the way. At times, hours go by and I’m still working my way through the clutter towards whatever it is I was attempting to do in the first place. Behind me the mess is re-establishing itself as fast as I can clear it. I’m like a little island of organization about to be swamped at any minute.
Even tiny little RM contributes more and more to the chaos all the time. Yesterday as I was consolidating boxes of confiscated toys, (remind me to tell you about my failed system for prodding the boys to pick up after themselves sometime) she is sitting next to me, watching as I take items from one box and add them to another. As I look away for a moment, she removes the same items from the box I just put them in, and adds them back to the box they were just removed from.
I should be happy she’s observing, imitating and learning, I know. If only she grasped the entire concept already. She does occasionally throw a toy into a toybox. Twice as often she throws a dozen toys out. Her latest trick is to slide the back screen door open to the limits of the latch, giving her just enough room to stick one hand out. Then she proceeds to give the dogs whatever she can fit through the crack. They have enjoyed chew toys like duplos, baby shoes, markers, water bills and the like.
Perhaps I should just let her keep doing it. If I can’t create order out of this mess, feeding the clutter to the dogs might be one way to get rid of it.
