Cleaning my room

Okay. Confession time. I am a slob. Not in the stinky, pig pen type, but I've been known to sort bills, worksheets, Christmas cards, paperback books, and work stuff into various piles and leave them until I'm in the mood to file them (and this mood could take months to resurface). Yes, I am a piler. My desk demonstrates this, as does my bedroom. Oh my god, does my bedroom demonstrate this.

In my defense, my husband works nights which means prime cleaning hours are often being used to sleep. By the time he leaves for work in the evening, I'm tired and don't feel like dealing with it. Additionally, our room is the catch-all for the things we collect when company is coming over and where I work on angel shells for extra money, wrap presents, and store fragile items.

The boys' rooms are generally cleaner than mine, (I'm a good Mom after all), but I have been known to tell them that they should ground me until mine's clean too.

Sunday afternoon, Gary and I stood in the doorway of our room and looked across the sea of piled clothes (he's guilty too), Christmas ornament storage containers complete with Christmas tree parts, my angel making materials, various half-empty boxes, empty and not-so-empty suit cases, sleeping bags (left out from one of the boys's mission trips), craft items, two empty cat food dishes, tools (you'd have to ask him about that one), photo items, stacks of books, handmade gifts from the boys dating back as far as August, and scattered pairs of shoes.

We could no longer get to the bed without climbing over the aforementioned items.

Even I have my limits.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

"No," he said. "I don't want to. It's my day off."

"Make you a deal" I drew him up close "Help me clean up this mess and when we get to the bed . . ." I whispered it in his ear (this is a family site after all)

He suddenly became very interested in cleaning.

We spent the afternoon and part of the evening re-organizing, putting away, folding, dusting, vacuuming, throwing away and storing.

About eight o'clock we both collapsed onto our bed and looked across the now clean bedroom. Everything put where it belonged. Even our walk-in closet had put in order, all the clothes hung by type. Candles were lit. Music played softly in the background. The world was a better place.

This was the moment we'd been waiting for. We let out contented sighs, snuggled up to each other.

And fell asleep.