sarah jane on clutter

Time to clean house. In olden days, this annual event meant that floors would be scrubbed, laundry washed, and rugs hung outside and whacked with some metal tennis racket thing.

These days, before I can even think of cleaning, I have to deal with the clutter. I doubt that pioneer mothers had this problem. What was their clutter? Too many wooden spoons? Their daughters played with a single rag doll while mine frolic with Polly Pocket and her 79 pieces of plastic clothing. How can a two-inch doll have more clothing than me?

Clutter – the detritus of modern human life. How did we get so much stuff?

Frustrated, I’ve stormed through the house, garbage bag in hand, sending the offending items (mostly toys) into exile in the furnace room—our halfway house en route to Salvation Army.

My children show a remarkable resilience to such attacks. In fact, they are quite resourceful. Shortly after the sudden disappearance of their toys, I saw a bath sponge dressed in a washcloth parading in our living room. A cat magnet was plucked from the fridge door and seen driving a shoe.

And never underestimate the versatility of underwear. Placed on the head -a hat! Worn over the face - a mask!

Other seemingly benign household items can launch a devastating attack in the hands of a four year-old, such as paper and its more whimsical cousin: toilet paper. My beef with paper is its ability to divide and scatter. One moment my child is peacefully coloring on a single piece and the next moment she is flinging “confetti” down the hall for an impromptu wedding. A coloring book becomes a shredded “fruit salad” and napkins are torn into tiny pieces as medicine for a sick Elmo.

During the toy draught of ’06 my daughters devised a game called “Africa” which involved foraging through the house with a paper bag to collect items from every room then returning to the couch to display their finds. Next dishrags would become bedding for a stuffed animal who usually had a cold and needed numerous kitchen utensils for the administration of medicine (yes—tiny bits of paper).

When these safaris were over, our living room looked—as my husband would say—as if “a bomb went off.” In addition to the already messy house, the clean-up effort was often too overwhelming for anyone to attempt without tears or copious amounts of caffeine. And depending on my mood, the hostile garbage bag might reappear. Or it might not.

I know this clutter is a sign of young minds working hard to explore their world one dishrag, one piece of paper, and one sick Elmo at a time. Someday my house will be eerily quiet and all items will remain as I have left them. The thought saddens me. So instead of raging against the clutter, I should rejoice at the creativity. Ha!

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Sarah Jane is a stay-at-home mom with three children - twin girls and a boy - who writes a parenting column for the Mukilteo Tribune. We will be posting her column regularly on our blog. Enjoy!