A House of Order

I am a firm believer in the whole "house of order" thing. Today I was reading library books with the kids and one of them was titled, "The Messy Family." The illustrations were cute and I expected a fun book that would teach my children a nice little lesson about keeping a clean house. Not so! Instead it ended up being some hippie book (no offense to any of you hippies out there) about a really messy family that hides their dirty dishes in the cupboard when they're "cleaning." They don't really ever clean their house because they're too busy with soccer practice, volunteering at "habitat housing," donating food to the local shelter, and helping an elderly couple fix a flat tire. At one point in the book the kids, Rusty and Dusty, decide to stop cleaning their messy room because they don't want to disturb the huge spider and her web in one corner, or the cat who's just had kittens under the bed. "Mrs. Messy smiled. 'Who knows how many of God's creatures may be making their homes with us." That was about when the alarms started going off in my head.

As I finished the book, I was more than a little disturbed and concerned that my children were gleaning lessons from it that I needed to correct immediately! I proceeded to talk to them briefly about the importance of keeping our house clean and orderly every day. Of course, they were only interested in turning back the pages to look at the kittens under the bed and decide which one was Dallin and which one was Mia, etc.

I'd hate for anyone to get the wrong idea here. I do not have a clean house. Let's just get that on record. Clutter is a constant battle around here. Getting the floor swept and the bathrooms clean is, let's just say, not a daily occurence. But we do try! The important thing to me is order. I think you can still have a house of order with dirty dishes in the sink and unmade beds. The key to order is the system behind it. There must be a place for everything to go, storage for everything needing to be stored, and a plan in place for keeping the system intact.

Before we moved we spent a lot of time organizing and cleaning our old house to prepare it to sell. For the first time ever there was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Keeping things clean, neat, and tidy became a way of life, out of necessity. And then we moved. Organization was replaced by countless boxes and a severe lack of storage space. Clean counters and tidy spaces were replaced by clutter with no place to go and cubbies with no hooks installed or baskets placed. We are back to square one. And it is getting to me.

The room that has been the most infuriating has been the play room. The room is smaller than our old one and the closet space has been cut by half. We also have double the toys now, after retrieving half of them from the storage unit they had been living in for months. It was driving me crazy:

A rare photo of the play room when it was actually picked up

Luckily, my mom called one day and announced that she knew what she was getting me for my birthday (and Christmas, and maybe my next birthday too). We picked it up on our recent trip to Utah. Take a gander at these babies:

The Trofast organization system from Ikea. A perfect marriage of style and order. The kids and I spent an entire day putting it together. (And in case anyone out there gets it into their head that they must have it too, which is a serious possibility, may I just suggest that you install the railings first, instead of last as the directions say?)

My slave labor, hard at work

The final result is order in the play room. No kidding. That doesn't mean it stays clean all the time of course, but with the system in place, it is much easier to clean. The kids used to have a very difficult time cleaning up the play room on their own. They were so overwhelmed by the toys and the lack of direction. Now they can (usually) get the room clean quickly and without being yelled at by mom! There's a place for everything and everything goes in its place.

A play room of order.

Now onto the craft room, and the guest room, and the library, and the mud room, and the garage, and . . .