Appearances

Appearances are not always correct. I thought my middle son was a fairly neat person. I thought that, that is, until I went to spring clean his bedroom.

He's not neat. He's just adept at hiding his messes.

I think he has "cleaned" his room all year by simply stuffing things in drawers. Last night I cleaned his room without his input. Yes, he helped, but I did not go through the time-consuming process of asking if he wanted to keep this or that. I made the decisions. It is clean now. I don't think he will miss much - he couldn't find it anyway!

I gave him the job of sorting through his way too many clothes. He only wears two T-shirts anyway - hates all the others. I made him make three piles: "ones I hate", "ones I don't really like", and "ones I love". I kept the "ones I love" pile and pulled two decent ones off the "ones I don't really like", and took the rest up to his brother's room. This morning, we went through the little guy's drawers, but his were not so messy since I regularly check his.

I quit half way through the little guy's room. I'm tired. I've got him packed for our trip, and his clothes sorted. I just need to haul some boxes to storage and others to give away. My oldest is supposedly working on his room on his own before I come to look at it. It shouldn't be that bad since I did go through all his stuff when we moved him back into his redone room after the leaks.

We're getting there.