Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

Works For Me Wednesday is hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer. Visit today’s carnival there to find more great tips from other bloggers!

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In my utility room I have a dresser. It’s an old dresser from an old ugly bedroom set that we were given. I use the large, flat top to fold my clothes on, and I use the drawers for all kinds of things: gardening tools that I don’t want to leave outside (there’s no room in the sheds), tablecloths, strange things I can’t find any other home for… and there’s our communal sock drawer.

Two of my sons are 2 years apart in age and they wear the same size clothes - including socks. It used to be that doing laundry was crazy, trying to figure out which sock belonged to which son. Never mind the fallout if I mistakenly put Kelsey’s sock into Brendon’s pile. Then through the week if they couldn’t find a match in their drawer, they were always going and stealing from their brother’s sock drawer anyway.

So I came up with the idea of a communal sock drawer. It’s the top middle drawer in the dresser, so as I fold clothes I can leave it open a few inches and just stuff socks in there to my heart’s content, not worrying about who they belong to. When the boys need socks, they just grab a pair out of the drawer. No more sock-induced stress for me, no more screams of “Mommmmmmmm, he’s got my sock and he won’t give it back!”… just peace. And a happy little community of socks.

Communal sock drawer - it works for me!

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I knew what he was doing, so I readied the camera and slipped into his room…

Whereupon he immediately grinned (not that he’s a ham or anything, noooo), and as soon as the flash had gone off he was holding up the book to show it off…

So how did I get a just-turned-9-yr-old to read a freaking HUGE hardcover Michael Crichton book until 2am in the morning when the only reason he put it down is that he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore?
Easy. I cheated.

Unless you’re having this read to you, you can obviously see that my son is absolutely OBSESSED with dinosaurs.  In just this picture alone you can see that his sheet set, his comforter, his bedside lamp, a poster on the wall behind him, and two of his hand-drawn pictures all feature dinosaurs. The only thing in the pic that *doesn’t* is the ant farm.  (Which we STILL haven’t gotten the ants for, by the way… Kelsey says he’s starting to think Uncle Milton’s is a fraud.)

Around this house, we get more than our fair share of hearing about and looking at dinosaurs all the time.  Consider the shirt my 2-year-old was wearing today:

Yeah, we’re inundated with big nasty creatures who would eat us if they could.  Kelsey actually wants to make a REAL Jurassic Park when he grows up.  Of course, the JP series are his favorite movies of all time, and his favorite Xbox game, too.

So imagine my delight when I found both Jurassic Park and Lost World at the thrift store today for 99 cents each! They’re in perfect condition (minus the grease-pencil price marking on the cover that will wipe right off whenever I can pry it from his hands).

Honestly, I didn’t think he’d want to read them right away. I figured they’d be nice to put on his bookshelf and read “one day”. After all, these are big, huge, HEAVY books.  Lots of text and no pictures.  We’re batting a thousand on “the reasons young boys wouldn’t want to even open this book” list.

I had this little speech all made up for when I showed them to him.  I was going to tell him to remember that the book is ALWAYS better than the movie, that it has details and entire scenes that they don’t have time to include in the movie, and even though the book might *seem* overwhelming because it’s so big, it’s like eating an elephant. You don’t think about the whole elephant, you just eat one bite at a time.  Like reading the book… one small part at a time and before you know it, it’s done.

I needn’t have bothered making up the speech.  The instant I pulled them out of the bag he went nuts. I haven’t heard that many “oh thank you thank you thank you’s” in a looooooong time.

I gave him the speech anyway.
Because I’m a mom, and that’s what we do.

Besides, it was a really motivating and well-reasoned speech.  So there. 

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I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
Okay ladies, I want you to be sure you bookmark this post. Sometime in your life you’re going to think that a tornado hit your house and it could not get any messier, and you’ll start to sink into the couch wondering how you’ll ever even begin cleaning it.

That’s when I want you to think of this post, and come back and look at it for some inspiration.
Because I am willing to bet that whatever has you down does not look as bad as this. And there’s your motivation… at least yours doesn’t look this bad, and you’d better get started tackling it before it does.

May I present to you… my disaster area. Once formally known as my utility room.

See, you’re feeling better already, aren’t you?

It didn’t start out this way; it evolved - although it did evolve rather quickly. We have two large sheds in our backyard for hubby’s tools, toolboxes, boxes of cables and wiring and who knows what else. There might be a dead body in there somewhere. If I find one, I’m not tellin’.

Apparently, those two sheds aren’t big enough to hold his stuff. (I’ve told you he’s a packrat!) This isn’t all of it either; his section of the family room that is his office is jammed floor to ceiling with more boxes of his stuff.

Well, we made a deal.
He gets the entire family room as his “office” or “den”, and I get my utility room back. Now, granted, the family does kinda lose out on this as we’re having to shift “family room” activities into the library or front living room; but hey… at least we’ll be able to walk in the utility room again without fear of bodily harm. I’ve also made it clear that that pile of boxes behind his desk has GOT to go, and if the family room ends up looking like that (or even like these pictures), then I’m going in there and cleaning house.

I am a woman on a mission!

Obviously this isn’t going to be finished tonight, but I did want to get it posted in time for Tackle It Tuesday. Whenever it’s finished, and yes that might be quite a while, I’ll come back and post the updated pics.

If you don’t hear from me for two days, send in dogs. BIG dogs. The kind they rescue stranded icy mountain climbers with. They’ll have to be huge to pull me out from under the massive avalanche of tools and boxes that fell on me.

Wish me luck!

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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