While cleaning Moanna’s Room…

My domestic streak is still running strong. Tonight I began to take on Moanna’s room. It’s bitter-sweet when I have to go through her things and pack up the stuff she’s out grown. It is a quest that I have been dreading. I have been procrastinating in a similar way that I used to when I had a huge paper to write. (I still maintain that I work best under pressure; I find most of my grades to be supporting evidence of this theory.)

I start the project with no real intentions of what will go where. I had no plan. I just started moving stuff, sorting stuff, throwing stuff – no idea what the end result would be. Roughly five minutes in, it hits me.  All of her toys with lots of parts (blocks, tool set, doll house, Mr. Potato Head, art stuff) will go up high on the shelf in her closet. It’s not because I don’t like these toys. I just don’t like picking them up every single day. OK, Let’s be honest. I don’t pick them up everyday because I don’t have that kind of time. I am tired of stepping over them and on them every single day. So these toys are going high up on a shelf, and I will call them Top Shelf Toys. Weekly, daily, just for fun or whatever, I will rotate the toys, so only one is out at a time. Moanna will get to rediscover her toys all the time instead of just throwing them all over my house because she’s bored with them. Some people have Top Shelf Liquor; I have Top Shelf Toys.

Unfortunately, the high from my Top Shelf Toys idea quickly wore off when I started digging through the toy box and other nooks and crannies of her room. First, let me just say, I bumped into a smart mouthed toy vacuum cleaner, and I did not appreciate what he had to say. “Hehe, this place is a mess, hehe.” SERIOUSLY. That is what he said. Second, let’s review the list of shocking (some of them humiliating) things I found in Moanna’s room.

1. A marshmallow
2. My silver braclette
3. A nacho chip of sorts
4. Glass beads that I decorated my wedding with
5.  A dead beetle
6. A dirty diaper

Yes, that’s correct, a DIRTY DIAPER. I think it has almost been a year since Moanna wore diapers.  How gross! How embarrassing! I found it in the back of her closet in one of those super-duper-diaper-trashcans. I can’t tell you if the diaper smelled horrific or not because the lid was only open the nanosecond it took me to see the diaper and then slam it shut in horror. Why, after a year, would I even think, “Hmm, what’s in here?” I should have never had that thought, and nothing should have been in there. This is how my universe works people.  Wouldn’t it be hilarious (hilariously mortifying) if we gave the super-duper-diaper-trashcan to  someone, and they found the diaper? Can you imagine?

Needless to say, that was the end of my cleaning streak for the night. Done. No more. Over and out. Call again later.  I can’t stomach anymore.

By the way, did I mention that this is how I spent my last night of vacation? No joke. Tomorrow at 8:00AM, I will return to Corporate America. A smart Mom would have opted for a bubble bath and a magazine. Not me. I’d rather spend my last precious hours of vacation with the lippy toy vacuum cleaner who chants, “I told you so. I told you so.”

Prev Post -> Artsy Fartsy Next Post -> Gratitude 08.14.2009