The Great Toy Explosion

You know that saying 'my house looks lke a bomb's hit it'? Well mine really does today, and what am I doing about it? No, I'm not in the midst of tidying, cleaning and sorting it out, I'm blogging about it. To me that's the first step-acknowledgement.

Before I had Joshua my house was my pride and joy, and living with a my boyfriend ensured the house was always tidy because he had major OCD issues! I'm talking full on, cup mats on the coffee table had to be lined up, facing the right way and the kitchen cupboards would only show their contents with the labels facing perfectly forwards. Yup, although annoying it meant the house was always spick and span.

Throw a toddler in the mix and my partner's OCD has been battered out of him and my frazzled day to day life barely has time to allow me five minutes to shower let alone spend hours maintaining a perfect house. As a reuslt my house often resembles an explosion at toys'r'us rather than the beautiful, picture perfect home I can now barely even remember!

Obviously we've adapted to the fact that my son sheds toys, clothing, nappies (well anything really) around him like a cat sheds hair. We understand it's messy and I long ago gave up even trying to pick up the toys once he finished playing with them. To him watching me put them away was a game and it was so much fun to empty them literally the second I put them away. This would usually result in a mental expleetive and deep craving for a large glass of wine. So I gave up. Now when 7pm comes and Josh is in bed, I'm that knakcered I can barely peel myself off the sofa and in to bed let alone pick everything up in preparation for the next day when everything will revert back to post toy-apocolyptic disaster.

 With toddlers, anything below your waist becomes fair game to them. If it's below your waist then it's their territory. Which is why we don't keep anything below waist height anymore. Not in the rooms Joshua can get to anyway. This does have it's problems though because now Joshua can open doors he's found a new friend in our toilets and has already swifty plopped my mobile phone down there (new blackberries aren't cheap can I add) and taken to filling the bath with clothes, toys, post, shoes and anything else he can lay his little hands on. It's also particularly annoying about the waist-level restriction when he gets in to my bedroom (we usually don't let him in there hence it's his favourite room in the house) as he runs to the drawers and swiftly empties them of their contents. My belt and underwear drawer seem to be a particular favourite as well as emptying my box of tampons all over the floor. Cheers for that son.

The kitchen was on the outer limits of the fall out zone

I've talked about the stepford wives before but it's days like today that I really am genuinely amazed at how they do it. How do they keep their houses perfect, their appearances un-frazzled and their husbands perfectly happy in the kitchen, bedroom and any other room for that matter? I just about manage to look after my son 95% of the time (the rest he's in his play pen watching Disney), me about 5% and anything else falls by the wayside most of the time! Lord knows how people with hoards of kids manage! They deserve medals!

So I guess it's time to stop writing about the mess and start tackling it. *Disheartened sigh* Wish me luck, see you on the other side people!

Love Chloe xx