I’ve really gone off the deep end this time. My husband is humoring me, but thinks I’m a little nuts.  In the last five days, I have become obsessed with shining my sink.

I’ve mentioned it before, and those who have ever been to my house can attest, I am not a particularly neat person. Not filth-and-squalor, just clutter. Piles. Haven’t-taken-out-the-recycling-yet kind of mess.  In addition to the general feeling of “I wish my house was cleaner,” I also felt like this situation needs to be addressed because, at some point in the next year or so, I believe we will try to sell this house. And that means staging, showing, cleaning, and packing. And it gives me heart palpitations just to think about it.

But if I have learned anything about myself, it’s that I like a plan with structure. I like rules, I like small steps. I like it laid out for me.  I can’t lose weight by simply saying, “I’m going to eat more vegetables and less dessert.”  I need to count my points on Weight Watchers. I can’t up and run a few miles just because I feel like it. I need to follow Couch-to-5K.

Enter, FlyLady.

For those who may not know about the FlyLady system, I described it to a friend of mine as “Couch-to-5K for cleaning.”  You start with little steps. No need to think about running three whole miles, or decluttering your entire house. Day 1? Just shine your sink.

Shine the sink? Seriously? This is going to help me clean my house?

It would seem so.

In our house, it had long been the “deal” that, while I am in charge of all of the groceries and cooking, M is in charge of dishes and cleanup. Works for me, I hate doing the dishes.  The trouble is, that often leads to a sink nearly overflowing with dishes by the time M gets home from work (since I’ve been too lazy and distracted to keep up, and have justified it with “it’s M’s job”), and a full dishwasher that hasn’t been run, and yesterday’s skillet never actually got washed in time for tonight’s dinner. Frustration abounds.

As of this week, though, I am nuts for an empty sink. For as much as I have always hated doing the dishes, it turns out it’s not that bad when you just get it over with immediately.  And as silly as it seems, it really does make me a little calmer to go to bed with an empty (and shining) sink.

It’s already having a bit of a ripple effect. Spending all that time emptying the sink, I found myself annoyed with the state of the window above it, so both kitchen windows got cleaned, inside and out. There’s less crap left on the kitchen table, and I got rid of a bunch of old papers taking up space on the counter.

There’s still a long way to go, both in the program and towards the mess that is still the vast majority of my house. But using this tool as a way to chip away, bit by bit, I might just see some real progress.

Any other FlyLady devotees out there? Anyone want to hop in and do this program with me? With a buddy or two, I might be convinced to do before and after pictures of my messy house…

My mom and stepdad have been here for much of the week. Always fun to have a visit, but the two of them are an unstoppable force of nature when it comes to cleaning, purging, and home improvement projects.

The garage, which M and I purged substantially when my in-laws were here, is now practically sparkling and perfectly organized.

The basement, which was still a bit of a wreck from our furnace and A/C install in July, got the same treatment.  Shelves moved, stuff categorized and up on palates, swept and shop-vac’d, and downright spacious.

The sunroom, which had maintained its “throw all the crap in there when company is coming over” status even after I moved my sewing space there, is now a joy to work in.  Shelves hung, light fixture replaced, carpet down. Crap removed. Fabric reorganized and stored. Aaahh.

The guest room, our “throw all the crap in there” room on the 2nd floor, has a closet that I haven’t even been able to approach for months.  Piles of books, old clothes, boxes of all that miscellaneous junk you don’t know what to do with.  Two of M’s leather jackets he hasn’t worn in years, two bridesmaid dresses belonging to my sister-in-law. A tie-fighter helmet from Star Wars.  My wedding dress, hermetically sealed and in a giant cardboard box.

But here’s the problem – sometime in the next six months, that room has to change identities and become home for a small new person to be named later.  Enter: my mom.

One after another, we filled big black plastic contractor bags.  Some heading to the Salvation Army.  Many in my driveway waiting for trash day, since our FOUR big trash barrels are already full from the week’s work.  Box after box of books thrown into the huge donation bin in the grocery store parking lot. And so much wedding stuff, thrown in there as soon as we moved into our new house, still newlyweds.  Finally, the dried-and-not-in-a-good-way bouquet, lovingly admired one more time and thrown in the trash along with the formerly-white shoes.  The dress, up to the attic.  And the veil, which I liked but see no reason to preserve indefinitely, has gone into Rebecca’s new costume box.  But not the sparkly comb we unearthed from the same dusty box.  That stays with me. For now.

So much done. SO MUCH crap out of my house, and either into the trash or ready to be donated. Plenty yet to be done, of course, but a massive push in the right direction.

No offense though, Mom, but I’ll be ready when you fly home tomorrow. I need a nap.

But in personality, I think she’s an awful lot like me as a kid.

There’s the funny similarities, like the fact that all she wants to do in the water is float. Or that she can often be found spinning in a circle and singing to herself.  She seems to be like me from a parenting perspective, too - pretty easy, big into rules, kind of sensitive to perceived slights or sadness.

We’re at the beginning of our annual Midwestern pilgrimage right now. Hauling our stuff all over Illinois and Wisconsin to visit various family members. This weekend was the yearly family reunion for my dad’s side, and it was tons of fun as always.  A pool, lots of young kids, silly games, junk food at every turn. Good times. Unfortunately, M had to stay home since he really didn’t have enough vacation days to join us.

Yesterday, in the middle of the Reunion Insanity, Rebecca woke up from her nap crying hysterically.  I asked what was wrong, and she choked out, “I miss my daddy!” Oh, the heartbreaking wails.  Eventually she calmed down enough that we could call M and she could talk to him.  And that was when I heard the most striking echo of myself as a kid, through buckets of tears and loud sobs and a thick throat:

“I just want to go home.”

Oh, how many times I said that as a child.  I was an intense homebody. My mom would drop me off to play at a friend’s house, and the other mother would call an hour later, saying I was ready to be picked up.  The first week of first grade was constant tears.  My first time away at camp, age 10, was an epic disaster of daily letters, begging to come home.  Even my freshman year of college, I racked up enormous phone bills (OK, much of which was to my boyfriend at the time), and almost didn’t go back after Fall and Winter breaks. I transferred at the end of the year, and ended up going to school two miles from home.  The fact that I have now lived a full time zone away for more than 10 years is nothing short of a miracle, but I think even that is nearing its end.

So, when I heard Rebecca all but begging her Daddy to let her go home (again today), my heart broke. Not just because we’ll be here for almost two more weeks and I certainly want her to have a good time, but because I remembered so clearly what that felt like. That intense homesickness, that desperate need to be near the things and the people that I missed.

I feel badly that I’ve passed that trait on to my child.  It’s hard to feel that sad, and it took away from my ability to enjoy things like Girl Scout camp, and for sure kept me from making a real attempt to take advantage of my first year of college (even though transferring was ultimately the best decision and my second school was a perfect fit).

Thankfully, I know it gets better. I was able to go away to camp a few years later and I liked it. I traveled to Europe and had a great time. I moved to Boston and fell in love and started a family.

And, hey, I’m 31 years old and want to live closer to my mommy. So maybe that’s not all bad.

But in the meantime, I will try to be patient with her sadness and remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach, of just wishing I could be back home.  I will try to help her enjoy the times when we’re away, and not just count down the days until we go back.  And I’ll make sure she gets to talk to Daddy every single night.

It was Saturday night, and we had just put the kids to bed. In their own rooms. In toddler beds.

We took full advantage of the fact that my dad and stepmom were in town.  When we put the kids down for their last nap in the cribs, we immediately went to work.  The bedroom that has been “the changing room” for the last three years had to become Daniel’s room. (Neither of the bedrooms were big enough to hold two cribs AND dressers.)  Loveseat went downstairs. Bookshelves of miscellaneous crap were emptied and put in the garage.  In went the new bed, the new rug (chosen by Daniel at IKEA).  Some decorations from Target, and now it’s a frigging adorable room.

When the kids got up, we let them explore the new space in progress for a minute, and then sent them down to watch Toy Story while we disassembled the cribs.  Of course, I had to bag up all of the hardware, since it turns out the darn things were recalled a year ago. Whoops!  Cribs to the garage, bookshelf to the hall, armoire in. And a little girl had her own room.

The first night went well. Rebecca was a little apprehensive at first, but eventually settled in.  She did manage to roll out of bed around 3AM, but recovered quickly and went back to sleep. Didn’t hear a peep from Daniel, though when his Good Nite Lite turned yellow at 7:30AM, he marched right into our room to say good morning.

Naptime was a little hairy, but that’s not really much different from how it’s been in cribs lately.  There was some getting up, some insisting that they weren’t tired. But eventually both went to sleep.

The second overnight was great, completely silent.  Second nap was mixed.  Rebecca went down reasonably quickly, but Daniel sang to himself for an hour or more, and pulled off all the vinyl stickers that were within reach.  Eventually, after a diaper and sticker intervention and a stern look from Mommy, he did go to sleep.

The truth is, they seem to love their new rooms and new beds. They’re excited about them, they’re proud of them.  They don’t seem bothered in the slightest by sleeping in different rooms.  Rebecca is tickled by the fact that she’s allowed to get up and use the potty all by herself, and sent M back into our room when he went to help her one time (she then walked past our door without so much as a glance, into her room, and closed the door – Miss Independent).  I still worry about what kind of trouble Daniel is going to manage to find, and that he may end up dropping his nap before he’s truly ready, but overall he’s doing well.

I had always thought I’d keep the kids in cribs until they were three, but with all of the travel and transitions coming up over the next few months, I figured two years and ten months was close enough.  I know there will be more testing of boundaries over the next few weeks, and that I have definitely lost a big aspect of control that I had in the cribs.  But it was time.

Goodbye, cribs. I don’t have babies anymore.  I have big kids.

“This is how we’re teaching our kids to live?”

It’s a mess. It’s always a mess.  Our house is cluttered. Some days, some rooms are better than others. And it’s not like we’re dirty. We’re not candidates to be on the next episode of Hoarders. It’s just that there’s too much stuff, and it’s all over the place. It’s a mess. It’s always a mess.  And this is what we’re teaching our kids.

M and I share the blame for the clutter.  Oh, sure. It bothers me more often than it does him.  He’s a guy, after all, and somehow has that selective vision that many of his gender share.  And he’s arguably the one more likely to be a pack-rat who holds onto more items for mysterious sentimental or “just in case” value than I would.  But I haven’t kept up with it, either.  I can come up with reasons, of course.  Not enough hours in the day, some lame idea that it’s not up to me, blah blah blah.  It doesn’t matter.  This is my house. This is my life.  And this is what I’m modeling to my children.

It was when he put it that way that I really got smacked in the head with the seriousness of the situation.  It’s not just that it’s kind of embarrassing when my mom comes to town, or that I’d rather have playdates in my yard than in my playroom.  Though that, in itself, is bad enough.  But the fact that I am very obviously modeling a behavior that I do not wish to see in my own children… well, there it is.

Obviously, you can think this way about nearly anything and it will either give you a pat on the back or a smack upside the head with regard to what you’re demonstrating to your kids.  I’m going to try not to make myself crazy by examining every last facet of my life, all at once, with this question.  But for now, I have to look around at my house, and think long and hard.

And so, let operation OMG PURGE THE CRAP begin.  No room is safe.  Toy purge. Clothes purge. Garage purge.  I need the space. I need the air. I need the order.  And I need to not teach my children that this level of mess is acceptable.

But, now, we’re thinking about adding one more to the list: separate bedrooms.

I’ve long been one to insist on keeping my kids together.  We’ve had occasional periods where one kid will disrupt the other’s sleep, and there were always people quick to suggest that we separate them, at least for naps. For whatever reason, I always was adamant about keeping them together, and the disruptions always passed.

But there’s something about 2.5 that has me reconsidering my stance.  It’s not the sleep. Sleep is just fine, and I don’t think separating them would make it significantly better or worse.  No, it’s more of a personal space issue.

My kids are in each others’ faces all day, every day. It’s just the reality of young twins. We go to the same activities. We eat meals together, we play together, they go down for naps together.  A lot of times, they play together, and it’s great.  But obviously they also fight and argue.  And have very few things that are their own, and very little ability to take some space if they want it. 2-and-a-half is hitting us, hard.

I like the idea of giving them each their own room as a way to have space to themselves if they need a break.  As it is, the bedroom that they share is a space used only for sleeping.  They don’t play upstairs very much at all, just a bit of running around while we get ready in the morning.  What if they each had their own room, with a few toys and books and cozy places? It’s not a gender-related thing for me, but more of a personality one. I think my kids are close to one another, but not as much as some twins I know, who would not want to be apart from one another.

This is also a little bit of hopeful self-preservation as I get ready for them to be out of cribs. My big fear is that the end of cribs will mean the end of naps, and that fear is only magnified if they are still sharing a room at that point.

But even more than being motivated out of fear, this is really about having something of their own.  A concept that is not totally familiar to them. Oh, sure, they have their own clothes and their own blankets. And one or two toys that are designated as belonging to one versus the other.  But nearly everything they have and everything they do is shared.

Just for kicks, I decided to ask them what they thought about sleeping in different rooms. I talked about how their beds are in the same room right now, and what would they think if their beds were in two different rooms? Would that be a good thing, or did they like having their beds together?  I honestly had no idea if they’d even understand the question.

Their answer? A hearty double-endorsement for “own rooms!”  Daniel was quite clear that his bed would go in the “changing room” (the second small bedroom that currently houses their dressers, a loveseat, and the now-defunct changing table).  Even when pressed, “are you sure you don’t want your beds together?”, they stuck to the “own rooms” vote.  And while I know this may or may not have any relation to their actual reaction to the transition, it was nonetheless interesting.

In the meantime, I will shop for cute wall decorations on Etsy and make my shopping list for IKEA.  This time around, I’m actually going to decorate these rooms, believe it or not!

So, dear friends, what do you think? Have you or will you separate your preschool-aged twins into separate rooms? Why or why not?  Do you think they really need the space, or am I totally projecting?

Been home for days, actually.  And yet, have written nothing.

I’m in that slightly crazed, disorganized post-vacation mode. Getting back into the swing of things, shopping for groceries, doing laundry. You know, boring stuff that needs to be done before you can feel settled again.

Except, I’m feeling very un-settled.  For one thing, my house is making me crazy.  Maybe it was two weeks with my parents, who not only have larger houses than I do, but also keep them a hell of a lot cleaner. Happy as I was to be home, I walked in my door and felt claustrophobic.  Smaller space, yes, but oh my god the clutter! So much crap! You know how you live with something long enough that you just stop seeing it?  Well, I was away for long enough that I see it again.  With a big, glaring spotlight on it.

The trouble is this: when do I deal with it?  Most of my waking hours are with the kids, who are not exactly helpful when it comes to purging a house of all of its excess crap. Indeed, they seem to be magnets for the stuff.  That leaves me with the 2-ish hours that they nap, and the 3-ish hours between when they go to bed and when I do.

That should be plenty of time, of course, but I end up doing other things. Eating lunch, taking a shower, lots of sewing, blog reading, and hiding in my bedroom with it’s blessed air conditioning window unit (holy crap, summer has finally arrived).  Alas.  Sometimes I wish I could either send the kids away for a day or two in order to get things done, or pay one of those people who make it their profession to throw out other people’s shit.

This all feels even more pressing to me than before, I think because in my own head I would like to imagine that we’ll be trying to sell our house sometime in the next year or so.  I have no practical reason to believe that’s true, but it’s in my head, so there you have it.  And it most certainly could not go on the market in its current state.

More tomorrow on other stuff that’s bugging me (I know, aren’t you excited!), but in the meantime, a few of my favorite pictures from our trip.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fellow HDYDI mom Krissy had a fun idea for a feature this week: showing off where we blog!  Really, it’s a “how do you do it?” question, answered.  How DO you manage to blog with twins running around?  Some people hole up with a laptop in their bedroom after the kids go to bed, some have a space all to their own.  Head on over to Krissy’s blog and find links to see where other people do their best work!

My desk is in a room off of the living room that we share with the kids.  Our boxy colonial has a small addition on either side of the house.  One side is a small, unheated sunroom off of the dining room.  On the opposite side is a (heated, thankfully) family room / den / office, etc.  If you’re facing the house, it’s on the right.

When we moved in, this room was hideously dark and dingy. Cheap wood paneling, no insulation, dark and dirty carpeting, no overhead lighting.  Bleh. [The decor in the photo is as it was the day we first saw the house, not our stuff.]

But we gutted it, and now we love it.  Bright and sunny.  It’s not a big room, 8 feet wide by 16 feet long.  Pre-kids, M and I had our desks and computers at opposite ends of the room.  When the babies arrived, we added a Pack & Play, but not much changed until we rearranged it into half-playroom half-office last June.

On one side, it’s an L-shaped desk where both M and I sit (he’s to my right).  It can be a little cozy when we’re both sitting there, but it works.  And we have a gate blocking it all off.  In some configurations, the kids figured out how to move the gate and get to the other side, but we seem to be in a good situation for the moment.

And yes, I cleaned up for you people.  It was much, much worse a few days ago.  My computer of choice is an iMac that I got last spring to replace my slow PowerBook from several years ago.  It just couldn’t handle the ridiculous quantity of photos I take.

The view from my computer (literally, taken with the built-in iSight camera) is of the playroom-half.  Frequently one or both kids can be seen leaning on the gate, shouting “uppie uppie uppie uppie!”  And I try not to injure myself as I leap over the fence to break up the latest fight over some toy or even a travel pack of wipes. They can have a room full of toys, but they both want the wipes! Ah, toddlers.

Anyways, this is where I blog.  When the kids are up, I get brief moments in my little corner.  When they’re napping, I’m probably sitting right there, feeding my internet addiction.

So, what about you? Where do you blog?

Witness, what used to be my back stairs:

The back stairs and mudroom is our primary entrance to the house, since it’s right off of the driveway.  But it’s been a safety hazard as long as we’ve lived here.  The photo above is a short time into demolition, but I assure you, they were nearly ready to crumble on their own.  And those rusty-looking pipe/posts are what I refer to as the Tetanus Handrail.  Not safe from a “preventing falls” standpoint, and I’m waiting for someone to cut themselves on it and need to rush to the doctor for a damn tetanus shot.  Sigh.

So, finally, despite the fact that it’s January and frigging cold, we’re getting this project underway.  The back stairs are being replaced with a small wood/composite deck and new stairs.  The mudroom, which has no foundation or other support and is basically falling off of the house, is getting some supports built and being gutted on the inside. It will still be a small, oddly-shaped room, but hopefully a little brighter and more functional, and less likely to fall down.

Anyways, demo has begun and is mostly complete, and this week they will start rebuilding.  In two to three weeks (knock on wood), we’ll have a brand new entryway.  It’ll be kind of noisy and messy in the meantime, but pretty minimal since it’s mostly outside and in a confined corner of the house.

There’s a million reasons why it took us over three years to finally attack this very necessary project.  Some of it is just laziness and not making the phone calls.  Some of it was people falling through.  And some of it is me vs. M.  While I know that some couples argue a lot and it works for them, M and I really don’t fight much.  But if there’s one thing guaranteed to have us majorly ticked at each other, it’s the topic of home renovation. Don’t even get me started on the kitchen.

While I’m not a big spender, I’m a damn shop-a-holic compared to M.  Especially big, permanent-feeling home improvement projects.  He doesn’t want to spend the money (“not a good time to ‘sink’ money into the house,” according to him), he doesn’t want to live through the mess, he doesn’t want to commit to a design.  Me? I want to remodel, redecorate, etc.  We make each other a little crazy.

Anyways, I finally convinced him on this one since there was a substantial safety issue, especially with our increasingly independent toddlers.  So, away we go…  let’s hope everything stays more or less on schedule.

We’re upstairs, pulling the kids out of the tub, when M and I both looked up and said “what’s burning?”  It was not unlike the smell when something you previously cooked and spilled in the oven starts to burn.  Yet somehow even stronger and more unpleasant.  M went down to investigate, friend was already opening windows.  Smoke was coming out the back side of the stovetop, near the clock and instrument panel.  Not good.  And the burning smell was so sharp and strong that it made you a little sick just to catch a whiff, even upstairs.  Blech.

What, you ask, would cause my otherwise relatively new and perfectly functional stove to combust in such a manner?  Well… um… I have a suspicion.

Remember my post a few weeks ago about our small, uninvited visitor?  I haven’t seen him in a while and he hasn’t been a problem.  But the one time I did catch sight of him a few weeks ago, he skittered away through the tiniest of slots… in my oven.  I assumed there was a hole through which he got out. I even used the oven a few times between then and now with no issue. Um.  Apparently not so much with the getting out of the oven.  It’s possible I just accidentally set the mouse on fire.

In my defense, it’s possible I didn’t kill him.  It’s possible he crawled in there and was dead already.  Makes the story slightly less cruel, but no less disgusting.

The Sears repair guy is coming tomorrow.  I said my oven was smoking.  I made no mention of the mouse.  Isn’t homeownership grand?

Blech, blech, blech.

But on the upside, no mouse droppings on my counter.  Sorry, little dude.  I didn’t mean to…