I’d like to live in a decluttered, clean, peaceful zone.  This is a pipe dream that may never happen, but I would definitely like it.  It’s not that it won’t happen because it is impossible.  But Matt and I seem to be people who have more things than places to keep those things, and stuff piles up.  To be clear — we aren’t hoarders where there are piles everywhere and we can barely function in our space.  It’s nothing like that.  We have a livable space that is comfortable to us and to guests, but it’s obvious that there are 4 of us, half of those individuals owning way too many books and half owning way too many small toys.  We certainly aren’t ready to be photographed for any architectural magazines either, especially in a feature on simplified, clean-lined, modern, or minimalist living 🙂  But our decorating instantly makes you feel like you are in OUR home — it just looks like somewhere we would live.  We did that on purpose.

On Saturday morning, I cracked a bit.  Zach ate a tiny little fuzzy from our rug (I handmade our rug out of yarn, so as it wears over time, the yarn balls up into little fuzzies that the babies pluck off and sample), he coughed and nearly choked, I had to get it out of his mouth which was traumatic for both of us, and I realized that I cannot live like this, whatever “this” is.  (Rissa had eaten a fuzzy on Friday and I went through the same routine with her and our vacuum wasn’t working).

I left Matt with the babies and abruptly left our house so I could think.  I spent 20 minutes by myself at the library with a mocha and a mystery novel I’d like to read someday from an author I enjoy.  Then I spent time thinking as I walked back.  Sure, currently, one of our rooms sits completely empty (and nearly painted!) while the rest of our rooms absorb the items that were previously in there.  So there is extra stuff around that will go away soon enough.  But my own desk is a pile of paperwork.  I feel overwhelmed by all there is to do and by the fact that I create most of what I need to do.

For example, I haven’t been keeping a standard baby memory book on each baby.  I’ve made my own.  So I have the blog, I have the scrapbook (it has 207 pages [12 inch square pages] and that gets us from the end of my pregnancy up through this March), and I have little memory books that I write myself.  These have monthly write-ups of each baby — milestones they acquired and descriptions of what play and social time and eating look like at any given month.  It is crazy to look back through and think, Wow!  They’ve only been doing that for __ months?  I feel like it’s been forever that they can sit up and play by themselves!  These little books are great and so is the scrapbook and so is the blog, but it piles around my head because the babies constantly change and I can’t even keep up.  I still need to scrapbook March-now.  And write up month 10 and 11 in their memory books.  And hope I remember what they were like 2 months ago and 1 month ago!

Given the renovating and the “documenting the babies” project and the inherent clutter that accompanies a Poulos married to an Olson AND the fact that I am a mom to twins and I relish my alone time and don’t feel like spending all of it on this house, I cracked at the choking on a fuzzy incident.  And then I spent the weekend cleaning.  Matt doesn’t recognize our kitchen because we have counter space rather than baby paraphernalia everywhere.  Our new vacuum is the super-suckiest vacuum EVER and I mean that positively!  It is so great — it plumped up our carpeting so it feels luxurious and sucked my hand-made rug completely clean of fuzzies.  I’d let the babies eat off that rug now (but they still can’t eat the rug itself).  I also made a special breakfast on Sunday and I haven’t done that since Christmas.  It was a weekend of working my tail off and feeling good about the results.

Here is the kicker.  I STILL don’t want to do this every day.  I want to be significant, more significant that just “I was a person who had a clean house and a simple life.”  I’m not going to devote myself to a clean house above all else because I have lots of more important things to do and to be.  And hey, I am still Jaime and I still live with Matt (which means we still have a painful process ahead of us of removing items from this house until everything fits).  And I still have alot of baby- and Olson family- documenting to do to catch up.  So I am still overwhelmed.  But it was nice to cook and deep-clean and tidy up for a weekend.  I recommend it.  It restored a bit of control that I had lost over my life.