A Day Off

I didn't have Logan yesterday (or today for that matter) as I'd had him all weekend and Connie wanted to spend time with the little man. Mark took the day off after working about two weeks straight.

And what did we do?

Pulled every last stitch of clothing out of the boys' rooms. Washed what needed to be washed which, par for the boys, was over half of said clothing. Weeded out what didn't fit anymore, passed down or donated what was passable, and tossed what was beyond shelf life. That was my job. Mark attacked the rooms by moving furniture and doing a detailed cleaning after he located the floors buried under mountains of toys, clothes, shoes, just plain garbage, and unidentifiable food. I washed all the bedding too, and made the beds once I could get to them because Lord knows if I left it to the boys to do they'd sleep on the bare mattresses!

My children are gross. I don't know how they can live like that.

I've made a list of minimum clothing needs for the boys -- school, church, play, sleep, etc. -- and when they get home from school today we will be reducing the number of clothes even more than my run through yesterday. Then -- oh, they are hating me for this one and have been since I informed them of it last night -- we will be going through all the toy bins and weeding those down 40 to 50 percent!

Please keep in mind we've been after them for weeks to take care of their rooms. We do have a rule of no food or drink upstairs but somehow someone always manages to sneak it up. We also have a rule of putting things away after you're done playing with it and while they are fairly good about it downstairs they slack off in their rooms. There is a part of me that wants to allow them autonomy within their own rooms but when I can't find clothes for Robbie (or his older brothers give me the same two outfits for days on end) I'm afraid the dictator comes out. It's just been a bit of a GRRRR couple of days...sorry for the vent.