Someday we gotta get organized.... or how you can learn to truly cherish a mess.

      This sign hangs in my kitchen. It's a part of my growing odd-ball cross stitch collection, and it is my favorite by far. In fact, it's become sort of a mantra for me. Like most moms, organization is something that feels impossible. I have tried. There have been trips to the dollar store to purchase a zillion little plastic containers. Things have been craftily re-purposed  Labels have been affixed. Hair has been pulled. I have spent hours upon hours on pinterest poring through other people's kitchens that look like this.....

     And feeling like a failure. You see, I can come home from work, and spend a good hour organizing, putting things where they are supposed to go, and then moments later it looks like this...

      That is our art cupboard. The one that we spend 20 minutes every Saturday morning reorganizing. Making beautiful. I swear on sweet baby Jesus' bald little head that it takes less than 2 minutes to get into that state. It's enough to make my slightly OCD self feel like running away to join the circus. My eye starts twitching, and I get grumpy. When I am on an organizing rampage my children stay out of my way. And that sucks, because the cupboard gets messy for a reason. It get messy because we use it. My children pull out paper and crayons, they sit down and practice their handwriting. They draw pictures like this....

      They put stickers where stickers shouldn't go. They learn, they grow, they live and breathe in this house, and that messy art cupboard is evidence. Exhibit A: Messy art cupboard. Children live here.

      Exhibit B: Two little red shoes, under the kitchen table. Not in the shoe room. This tells a story of my small, blonde girl running in from the car after preschool. She throws her backpack on the kitchen table and says "Mom, I show you dis'!" She has concentrated with all of her might, using small, dimpled hands that don't always obey her and has drawn for me three beautiful pictures. She is so proud that it looks like stars will fly from her smile. She kicks off her shoes and throws her arms around my neck. The shoes stay under the table for one full day because we are too busy to notice them.

      Exhibit C: My microwave. Here we have a preschool workbook, a lunch box, vitamins, a school fundraiser packet, a betta, the reading glasses that I should wear, but never do, and two precious Winnie the Pooh books that my mommy used to read to me. Most of it shouldn't be there, but that's where it has landed on the way from one activity to the next. It's kind of a halfway point. 

      Exhibit D: The "later" drawer. That flashlight and camera will get batteries later. I will glue that Santa's hand on later. We will blow those candles out later. There's Avalon's Minnie Mouse board book, which I am putting aside to hide in our "important baby memories" storage container (okay, containers). I don't really know what the half-eaten candy cane and Life Aquatic DVD are doing there, but every item tells a story. A story of children who live here. A story of things that get "laters", not people.

      When I look at pictures like these.....

   

      I see that indeed, their organizational skills are far superior to mine. But I wonder, do people actually live here? Do children wake up and run down the stairs to be swept into arms, to spill cheerios on the floor, to draw pictures of kittens. Do people live here, feet firmly planted on floors that should probably be mopped, or do they flit around their homes like ghosts? 

      I have watched three beautiful children grow from tiny, squinched up butterballs, to tall, brave, intelligent, independent children. I feel as though I blinked, and it happened. I know that someday, I will get organized. But it will be at the cost of closing doors, goodbyes, and towering beautiful people that I somehow birthed, and kept alive into adulthood. It will be at the cost of large hands, too large to hold mine, and other places to be. A sink with a paltry two dirty dishes. Empty silences, walls free of fingerprints. There will be no hello kitty stickers on my van windows. No handfuls of dandelions in dixie cups. No rushed whirlwind of joy and crayons through my kitchen. Someday I will get organized, but it's okay that it isn't today. I have better things to do :)

      This may seem like a very long and overly emotional justification to a messy kitchen, and that's okay. I don't want to regret another lost moment.

Perspective I'm sorry dear, you're out of socks, And dinner is late, besides, But I helped Timmy fly his kite And showed him where a dormouse hides. I'm sorry dear, I didn't find The time to take the wagon in. Today a bird fell from his nest And we two put him back again. I'm sorry dear, but I forgot About the cuffs I meant to sew. We saw two dragonflies in love And then we helped a flower grow. (I did not write the above poem, but I think it's lovely.)