Organization, Oh My

Nine months into having a household of seven, I am still not well organized. The jump from 2 children to 5 really affected the work on every level.  I think I need to start a support group for "sudden mothers of many" so we can all commiserate about how hard it is to wash all the clothes, keep everything picked up and feed everyone!  I should point out that the only one of these I actually accomplish is feeding everyone.   This lack of mastery over the household is contributing to a fair amount of "mind talk."  I keep telling myself that loving them is more important, but I am not yet convinced! 

I think I need to purge a lot of stuff from the house to create more storage space.  That is probably my first step.  I think I also need to re institute my system for focusing on one major task a day (kitchen, ironing, vacuuming, etc.) and not sit down for the evening until I have actually done that one thing.  I notice that I am lots happier when all the floors are clean.  It's weird that clean floors have an impact on my happiness.

What I somehow want to find out is how anyone manages all the people and things without making the older kids do tons of work.  When I look at ridiculously large families, like my dad's or The Duggars, the older kids do a lot of the labor and child minding.  I am trying to avoid that if I can.  Right now, I am working with Pepper and Sunshine to just pick up after themselves, thinking that would help my sanity quite a lot.  I have also figured out that toys with many pieces need to be put away and only played with under supervision, or said pieces wind up everywhere, including being carried around by the dog.  I think we just have too much stuff.  If anyone has any wisdom for me, please share! 

Here are a couple of funnies for you.  Tinker is a huge Sesame Street fan, and Elmo is her particular favorite.  To be fair, it's almost the only TV they watch, so of course she loves it.  About 4 pairs of her panties have Elmo on them so lately, she's taken to calling them "Elmo-ware."  As in, "I don't want it fairy panty.  I want Elmoware!"  Funny girl.

Pepper left her vocabulary cards on the kitchen table so Sunshine and I picked out a couple of words and have been liberally sprinkling them into the conversation.  It's easier than you think to work in  "proclivity" and "rollick" when most of your conversation centers around a bunch of toddlers.   Pepper seems surprised and annoyed by Sunshines' sudden proclivity for using complicated language, but does not appear to have figured out the cause yet.

 I was busy soaking up the love while my folks were here so I did not make many posts.  Pretty quick I am going to backtrack to Thanksgiving and post my sweet potatoes and Cranberry Sauce recipes because I really liked how they turned out.  See ya!