This is where it starts......

We have “STUFF”, lots and lots of “STUFF”, and it makes me CRAZY on an everyday basis. What

makes me even more psychotic is the fact that we live in a smaller house, about 1400 square feet, split level and the kids play in a space that is about 400 square feet if that!  Picture a small space littered with Barbie shoes, Lego blocks, hair rubber bands, My Little Pony fluff and any other girl toy that we’ve been given in the past couple of months. To say that I feel like I drowning in crap would be the understatement of the year!!

On top of all of this stuff we’ve outgrown our house by leaps and bounds in the last 6 years. When we moved in it was just Mitch and I and then we got our first cat Luna and life was good. Then we added on to the family and had Roo, and life was still good….a little more crowded but still good. Then we decided to add on another member of the family and we had Sophie. Life got a little more crowded in our small little space, but it was more of a homey feel to the house. It started to look REALLY livable. You know those signs you see for parents of children that says, “Don’t mind the mess, we live here and we are making memories.” Yeah that’s our house! Then last year we added one last child to our happy little family and *poof* Claire arrived, and now it’s so tight in that house. Add two more cats to the mix and every day I wake up wishing for a bigger house, or less crap, but usually it’s a bigger house WITH less crap.

Example of our living room floor on a fairly decent day:

Lovely, right, SO you are slowly getting a picture of what my house looks like 99.9% of the time. Even if I wanted my house to look like the freakin’ Cleavers I’d NEVER leave because I’d spend my life cleaning up after everybody! I’m not that mom. I’ve got better ways to spend my non mommy time then freakin’ cleaning. I have a life to live too! So there’s got to be a happy medium here, there just HAS to be or I’m going to lose it and someone is going to find me sitting in the corner of the room in a white coat with really long sleeves rocking back and forth saying, “Who’s a good mommy?” like a MILLION TIMES.

So my awesome mom comes over and says, “Kev, you need more storage space.” When you say “storage space” do you actually mean a new house, because if you do, then I TOTALLY agree with you! My mom is great, she’s like this Tetris savant that can go into a room and in like an hour it looks like Sheldon Cooper had visited you and you never knew your space could look THAT good! My husband has the same gene; that man can pack a car for a trip and he’d be able to fit 7 crates of stuff in a space that would normally fit 3. I severely lack that gene and it shows in moments like these.

So I need more storage space….back to the same problem. 

So the conversation went something like this:

Mom: Kev, you need more storage space

Me: Yeah, I know, or a new house.

Mom: You could get bins and put them along this wall and then you can have the girls pick up every night, and you can label the bins so that they know what stuff goes in what bin, and it will help with their reading skills and will teach them to pick up after themselves.

Me: That would be great, you have suggestions?

And this is where it starts to cost money…..

Mom: Well you can get fabric containers or plastic ones and we can go to the Container Store.

Me: There’s a Container STORE?!?!?

Mom: Yes and you’d love it! We should totally go and find you what you need.

Me: That sounds awesome.

Then the reality starts to set in. Let’s start to take inventory at this moment, shopping with three little girls in a container store. Normally our girls are pretty well behaved, but on a very rare occasion my realistic mom reality kicks in and knows that this could go sideways very quickly.

Me: Yeah, let me talk to Mitch and see what he has to say and yeah…..*shaking my head up and down* Yeah……

So I can see how this is a great idea. Let’s just create a more conducive space that we all can live in and not have it look like WWII has been fought in our living room!  At this point in time I won’t even bore you with the conversations that were had about closet organizers and how we really could utilize our space to the fullest if we organized and used the spaces that we have a lot better. It’s not that I’m not appreciative! I am! It’s a matter of energy, time and money that I find myself up against. Working a full time job, taking care of three girls, a husband, a house, bills, cleaning, meals, and extracurricular activities for the girls, time for one’s self, socializing, etc….you see where I’m going with this. Life is where I’m going with this. It happens when you’re busy making other plans.

So I have this conversation with Mitch at least once a year if not every couple of months, and since it’s summertime and he’s off school this could POSSIBLY, MAYBE just happen! I’m all for it. So he and I decided to go to Wally World in search of containers. It’s close, it’s cheap, it’s doable with three little girls wrangled in a cart, and its Wally World. Any behavior that they have will be trumped by the girl who shoves her size 18 body into size 4 shorts and the drunk guy walking around barefoot stumbling down the aisles. We can totally do this!! So off to Wally World we go.

We arrive, right after naps and snacks so our odds of better behavior has sprung up to almost 90% chance of no yelling, screaming or gnashing of teeth! I’m so optimistic because we have a plan, we have a destination, and hopefully we should be in and out of Wally World within 10 to 15 minutes tops. Again, I laugh at my own naivety. So we go straight for the container aisle. Our choices are wooden crates at $11 a pop, plastic containers for $9 a pop and this kid looking container holder thing that you have to put together from China. Couldn’t find wicker, fabric or any other container and I keep thinking maybe the Container Store would have been a better way to go. After MUCH debating, way more than 15 minutes worth, we decided to go with the wooden crates. I hate plastic tubs for storing toys; it’s just not my bag anymore, especially if this is going to be visible in our living room. Give me something sustainable and reusable and classy looking. Last time I checked plastic tubs did not fulfill ALL of those requirements.

So six crates later, loaded up in the back of the Pilot and away we go. Now this is where the fun begins because in our house nothing is ever THAT easy. We want something classy, nice and something that will stand up to three little girls. Hopefully we can re-use and repurpose these crates after they’ve all grown up and we don’t have to store toys anymore. We try not to half-ass projects if we can avoid it.  

This storage space, with these six $11 crates will end up costing some serious cash because the time that Mitch and I took to sand those puppies down to a nice smooth surface is worth all the effort to avoid splinters to little fingers later on down the road. While we are at it, let’s have Mitch stain them and Poly them! Let’s ask Senior if he’d be so kind as to build shelves to store them; a trip to the lumber yard for 2 sheets of plywood to build that at $25 a sheet. Then they cut them all to fit and put them together. With one sentence, “You need more storage space,” see how this project started?  Multiply that by all the storage space that we need and we could slowly go broke to fix a problem we wouldn’t have if we just cleaned out the spaces we stash things…extra things that we don’t NEED!

Mitch hard at work sanding the bejesus out of one of the crates

Proof I helped!

I ended up looking at Mitch and said, “You do realize that we are spending money to store stuff that we should probably throw away or donate right? Let’s think about how sane that really is. If we actually went through the stuff and cleaned away all the toys that don’t get used anymore we wouldn’t need as many containers.” He lovingly agreed, but we are still charging ahead with the container project, we are this far into it. It’d be ludicrous to stop now. He did agree though to help me go through the house and get rid of all the things we don’t use anymore or don’t need any more. So it’s a start.

There comes a point in time I believe in every family of five’s life where you just get so overrun with “stuff” that you don’t know where to even begin. You get crushed under the tidal wave of consumption. This is where I find us right now. It’s a hard place to find myself and I want OUT! This container project is at least a place to start. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…or in our case a single project.