Having too much...

I've been trying to clean my house for over a month. "Clean" is actually a strong word for what I'm shooting for... Although I'd really like to, I've given up on ever getting down on my hands and knees and scrubbing the grout between my kitchen floor tiles. The soap scum in my bathtub, is probably gonna be there till both kids are in school...full day...maybe even till they go to college..I think about cleaning the inside of my fridge on a daily basis, but alas, this to will probably also have to wait...especially since nobody sees it but us. When I say clean, I'm just talking about finding a place for the piles of things that have overtaken every surface of my home...so I guess I'm really just trying to pick up.

While my kids were napping this afternoon, I tried again...I hit the playroom/family room first. For the 10,000th time in my life and career as mommy, I put books back on shelves. I completed wooden puzzles and stacked them neatly. I filled a grocery bag with toys that belong in Sam's room. When I finished, I looked around and felt discouraged...it's still not clean, not picked up...Like the rest of my house, it's filled to capacity with stuff.

My first thought was that I need a bigger house. For those of you who've never been here, I live in a three bedroom, two bath house with a kitchen, dining room, living room and family room...It's about 2,000 square feet...not huge, but adequate for a family of four. A bigger house in my little corner of suburbia...not to far from Boston would cost well over a half million dollars...so, I'm probably not getting one, not anytime soon...maybe if I found out I am pregnant with quadruplets...maybe Oprah will buy us one then...not sure if four babies is enough to get her attention, might have to have sextuplets...I digress...as I looked around I felt a tad convicted...I don't think the problem is about space, I think it's about stuff. Too much stuff, way too much stuff.

Do my kids need 200 books (I'm guessing, haven't counted)? How about thirty wooden puzzles? A bucket of cars that weighs fifteen pounds? How about vhs tapes and dvd's? I think there are close to 100 in the entertainment center...

I went into my room and looked at the mess. I never got around to putting all my summer stuff in my closet...there are plastic bins everywhere...do I need all that? Do I even know what's in them? Did I miss any of it this summer? Nope.

Dining room...you can't see the table. The hutch and armoire are full of things that don't belong in a dining room and a lot of stuff that does....like ten sets of cloth napkins. They're beautiful, all from Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma, but they don't match our new house and even when they did match, I never used them....

I could go on and on, from room to room...too much stuff everywhere...way too much stuff. So, I'm going to try to purge...I just stuck a bag of videos on Freecycle...so now, we only have ninety...is that still to many? Probably, but for a pack rat like me, it's a start.