Stuff!

Everyone has heard of spring cleaning, but Fall cleaning? Not so much. That is exactly what we have been doing the last few weeks. As we explained in Moving On Up! We started this because of issues with our neighbors, but it has completely continued due to necessity.

Since Mad Dog and I don't have much time together we try to schedule this kind of cleaning for when we're both around. Right now this means our weekend mornings. Not the ideal time, but it worked out this weekend. After tackling Loki's room and our room, we thought Lex could use some shaping up. Though his room is usually fairly organized, it need a little straightening up. The biggest thing I found to be out of control was his book collection.
 

Much like his father and mother he loves books. As I've said before we don't deny any of the kids a book when asked (as long as we have the cash for it), because of this we have tons of books. This is by no means a bad thing, but it can be an issue when it comes to storage. This weekend we took time to weed through the kids books, keeping those that we felt had a future life in our house, the loved and the ones that were still in good shape. Some went to donation, others will visit our daycare for young future readers and some had to find their way to recycling we're sorry to say. Long with books the toy situation is completely out of hand. We again took time to go through everything. Some of the baby toys will be washed and brought to our daycare of a new member of the class to play with, others we handed over to Loki and even more found their way to the trash. The majority of these were broken, had miscellaneous pieces missing from them, but the majority of them stayed.

Along with cleaning up and sorting through his stuff, we rearranged his room. Taking out a small table and giving him room for a possible future bookshelf. The closet was reorganized and we found uses for all the empty Duplo and Lego containers Mad Dog brings home from time to time. His closet is also home to Lex and Loki's short boxes for comics. They hold their "Birth" week comics and any series we start for them. Lex's room contains his bed, a couch (which if my Grandmother knew what the kids and Mad Dog did to it she would kill me), a cube book case and his dresser. His dresser was mine when I was a baby. I painted it years ago and changed out the hardware. It's standing up to the beating of two moves and Lex, so all in all it's not too bad.

I will give Mad Dog and I some credit, we are picky about what the kids play with. We support Lego (Hmmm..wonder why?) and because of this we have a ton of Duplo blocks which the kids play with ALL the time. We don't have a lot of "Girl-Toys" or "Boy-Toys" both Lex and Loki play with things equally - from the play food which is storied in Loki's room to the superheroes in the living room the kids play with them together or solo. Along with Duplo, we have two other large collections of toys: Superheroes and Cars. Lightning McQueen is loved by all (KACHOW!) and we have about 20 different versions of Lightnings floating around the house, but somehow they always want the same one. Along with cars we have the superheroes, which pretty much includes anything that is an action figure, so Star Wars and G.I. Joe are included in this category. I sort the figures by size. Mad Dog makes fun of me for this, but sorting by size means that you're playing with all the same type of toy rather than weeding through figure after figure for the right one. We have small figures, which you can find Imaginext figures, Galactic Heroes (Star Wars) and Super Hero Squad (Marvel). The cube includes figures and vehicles. I have a cube for big heroes has anything figure that is like 12 inches tall and the Krypto the Superdog toys that I had brought before we had Lex. The last cube of heroes are the "heroes that are just right" as Mad Dog say. This cube has all the Justice League Unlimited, G.I.Joe and Star Wars.

Like a lot of families our living room is full of toys. We try our best to control the over flow, but doesn't always happen. Both Lex and Loki do keep some toys in their rooms, but they tend to play in the living room or the middle room (which is off the living room). I think it's because that is where we are most of the time. They don't like to be off in a different part of the apartment if we're not there. We have several of the cube bookcases, which we love and complete help control the mass of toys that overwhelm us from time to time. They help us hide them. We also have a great coffee table, that was a buffet table at one time. We chopped the legs off when we lived in Chicopee and thought this kids ruined it, it had the start of paper cut mural. The table doesn't have doors on it, but has the opening facing the couch which is the perfect place to put toys and books that we don't want all over the place. We also have some Lego display cubes, which are full of Duplo and create a window seat that looks our over the street.

With all the toys comes our stuff. Mainly we have books in the living room, with some pictures, (right now) Halloween stuff and a few Knick Knacks. Photographs are big for me and I have as many as I can around without going overboard. I have had to real it in but I think I'm in a good place right now. In the clean-up this morning the living room didn't under go any major changes except for going from disaster to clean , this meant no rehanging of art or storage, with the exception of the highchair. We don't have room in our kitchen as we use it for a kitchen table, so our dining table is in our living room. This meant the high chair was there too. We have retired it. I think Loki is a little lost without it, but she's gotten over it.

It was a good, productive day. We have 3 more rooms (actually 2 and 1/2) to do. The "Middle" room which is off the living room/the entry room. We broke this room off since it was easier to focus on two smaller rooms rather than one HUGE space. The Middle room will be a lot more work for Mad Dog and I, since it tends to house more stuff related to us, such as office stuff. Then there is the kitchen, which we have started little by little. We're looking to reorganize it more than anything else and get rid of the stuff we just don't need like everything one the top of the refrigerator (what the hell I can't even reach it). Lastly Mad Dog would like to organize some storage space we have. There are two "closets" in our back hallway which houses: games, craft supplies, camping gear, stored kids clothing and probably the Yeti or Wompa. We need to go clean out stuff we just don't need and send the Yeti home. I took more pictures of Lex's room and the Living Room which I will post in a separate post in a long string. Friends are aways asking what our place looks like, this might give you and idea of just how eclectic we are.


Oh on one quick note, I painted two pumpkins we picked up at the farm. I used India Ink.