Release

It was time.  

And, no, the photo above is not really from the Ohboy home.  Google "hoarders" and take your pick....  I guess people will put ANYTHING on the Interweb.  Gasp!  I know!  I was shocked, too, when I found out.

I couldn't honestly tell you the last time I'd reached all of the nooks and crannies of my kitchen counter.  We had run out of space to make lunches and prepare meals because there was a teensy little glitch in the feng shui of my Leaning Towers of Paper.

In the living room, I moved the Christmas tree (yes, the Christmas tree.  In my defense, it's small and white, but, obviously not a Halloween tree) and thought I'd spotted Bigfoot, there was so much pet hair under there.  The not-so-fine layer of dust coating everything made me feel all nostalgic like we were still passing through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona--if the deserts were wall-to-wall with bins of Legos and Angry Birds.  

Okay, so I'm being a skoch dramatic.  

Over the past couple of years, we've decided that Mr. Ohboy probably has some form of Asperger's.  He's a fixer of things, but not at all neat.  I think he used to be neat.  He also used to be a tree-hugging Democrat, but then he married me and I flip-turned all of that upside down.  Must've been my cheery disposition, huh?  Anyhow, he's messy.  And, lucky me, I have a few more boys up in this hizzy who are varying shades of the same incredibly sharp and yet very fragmented mind.  Whether I nag for something to be tidied or he takes the initiative himself (which only happens in the garage), the results are always puzzling....  Usually a twisty-turny path lined with piles of things, leading to an eventual bottleneck.  Straight lines and angles?  No way!  Navigation through even the most mundane room should be an adventure, and even a little bit dangerous!  Where is the excitement in placing things against walls or--gasp!--throwing it away?  Nowhere, that's where.

If you've ever seen one of those t.v. shows dedicated to hoarding, you'd understand that my family was just one major life event away from never washing another dish or throwing away a food wrapper.  Again, I'm being dramatic, but, at the same time, I'm sure that lots of those people on those shows probably didn't see it coming, then BAM!  They wake up six feet deep in used adult diapers and fossilized cats.

Last Saturday four of the six of us came down with some stomach thing, so we decided, come Sunday, to hang out at home close to facilities and far from other persons who probably didn't want what we had.  That's when we (I) began Operation Declutter.  Spurred on by some organization my mom had done in the boys rooms while we were on our trip, we began by dusting our room.  To dust our room, we had to fold roughly 15 loads of laundry that had been dumped in the corner, file papers, throw away boxes.... you get the idea.  From there we moved to bathrooms, crusty floors, my walk-in closet nightmare, the living room toy explosion, and, finally, the kitchen (a.k.a. filing cabinet with a stove).

Five days, I've been at this nearly from morning till night, taking the odd break to sit down, go to a prenatal appointment, or ride a horse.  I estimate I clothed a plus-sized army with all of the clothes I lugged (literally) from the house--a mini-van full.  In one load of garbage/recycling, the weight of all of those broken, boring toys lifted from my shoulders.  I love the way my house looks, and the ease at which it takes to clean things now that I don't have to shift so much junk to unearth the surface below.

I've not completed my mission.  I still have three toy boxes to sort through, and a few baskets of boy clothes to move into bins, which will be exiled forevermore in the plastic bin catacombs.  The catacombs are next; and, while my soul is itching to tackle (and annihilate) the Rubbermaid abyss, I know I am tired and anxious to make some forward progress on the novel.  The clutter was a snare to my creativity, the words finding themselves buried in unimportant things.  

Releasing means receiving peace.  I'll take all the peace I can get.