Help Is On The Way

This week's Cleaning Club began long before Monday morning. The Shannon family had been down and out with a very bad cold. We were sicker than we have been in years. It was such a great relief to know that we could just be sick without worrying about the house for the whole week. My mantra was "Cleaning Club will be here on Monday."

It turned out that I had a bit of reprieve over the weekend and was able to get some work done around the house, but not having the pressure of feeling like there was no help allowed me to clean the house and do laundry in a completely stress-free way without resentment.

Monday morning then found us with a clean house, so I decided that we'd go into the room which I'd pretty much avoided since we moved in September: Bernadette and Andrew's bedroom. These guys just turned 5 and 3 respectively and have a bunch of toys in their bedroom. It's been just chaos pretty much the whole time we've lived here.





So with the help of King Michael's direction, we sorted and recycled, trashed and cleaned. It was another time where I was just so glad to have Jennifer and Rachel there--because I started feeling worse again as the morning wore on and left to my own devices would have ended in a far more chaotic state than we began. We stripped all of the bed clothes . Using the tutorial from preparing for Michael's birth, Rachel washed and dried all of the bedding. Jennifer and I flipped the mattresses.





The results were just fabulous! It's one of those projects for which I am so glad we have before and after photos. The difference in that room has been phenomenal and has endured an entire extra week of mommy being dreadfully ill. Bedtime is better. Nap time is better. In fact everything about that room is better.





And what is the first thing all kids want to do in a newly cleaned room? Why dump out all of the the toys, of course, and play in this wonderful "new" space! Lyle and Andrew got right to playing with the trains on the cleaned and cleared floor. Since we cleaned--Bernadette and Andrew both have really enjoyed playing in their room. It's been so much easier for them to pick up, since everything now has a place and is easy to put away.



Even King Michael looks pleased at our offering. Huzzah!

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The Project with Multiple Benefits

One thing we've never really done before is a project in one of our (count 'em twelve) kids' bedrooms. Of course, many of our projects benefit our kids (arguably all of them do since they make their mamas happy), but, today it would directly benefit my son Luke, whose closet desperately needed tending.


It was crammed and cluttered and with the recent addition of several toys that contain seventyhundredjillion pieces, everything was just stock-piling and it was one of those things in the Stuff to Get to Someday area of my brain.


While considering cleaning out and reorganizing Luke's closet, I realized that this project would also help me remedy one of those minor hassles of Cleaning Club that Shannon so eloquently described in her last post, namely: the cleaning up after having a house full of kids thing (or as Shannon described it, the "post-cleaning club apocalypse." But, she's prone to hyperbole. A rhetorical device I would never in a million years consider using!)


Because of the aforementioned seventyhundredgazillion piece toy fetish Luke has, his room is often ground zero for the mess- making. This is true not only of times we host Cleaning Club, but when we host parties or friends with younger kids. So, in cleaning out Luke's closet, we were able to free up space to stash most of those containers of toys up high, AND I pulled out several things that he doesn't play with anymore to put in the hall closet so we can pull those things out for our littlest visitors to play with in the main living area of the house. Perfect!


Michael oversaw the efforts, and only once mentioned an OSHA violation.


Also, lucky for us we had not one but two superheroes on the premises (just in case).


We started by taking off the doors of the closet. This allowed us to move over the dresser in there to free up more floor space on one side and makes for easier access all around. Then we took every thing out of the closet and piled it all up around Michael, like some kind of offering, and we vacuumed the rug in there.


We sorted everything--trash, recycling, donate, send home with another Cleaning Clubber, and move to another part of the house--and then put back a few things and added more containers of toys that had been on the ground. And the Spilling Over Effect I mentioned in my last post happened again when we ended up sorting and dusting Luke's shelves while we were at it (thanks to Shannon taking the initiative). After lunch we cleared out everything that was leaving the room and delivered it to its rightful place (including Jennifer taking away my donations piles, which I so appreciate her always offering to do).
 

The effects were immediately evident as Luke was thrilled to see his new closet, the little kids had a great time with all the stuff now set aside for them, and the clean up was quick and done before everyone left. And later that night, when two other younger kids came over to visit, the room stayed clean easily, too.


I loved the way Cleaning Club worked today. It was a high I rode for the rest of the day and brought with it a solution that will help in the future, too.

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Creating Manland

It’s really funny that my post is on the heels of Rachel’s, because yesterday I was seriously ready to call this whole thing quits. My kids decided to more or less refuse to clean up the remnants from having their friends here during Cleaning Club. Four hours later the house was still not put all back together. I was sure that we’d just have to skip our house from now on--because I just could not deal with the fallout from Cleaning Club any more. Fast forward to 10:00pm when my husband expressed the. most. sincere. gratitude for finishing up the room he’ll use as his study, and I remembered just how worthwhile it all is- even in the face of the worst post-cleaning club apocalypse.



This room had been the dumping ground since we moved. We had agreed that we’d just leave the unsorted boxes in that room to deal with later. Later was apparently becoming never. It was one of those truly awful jobs that nobody wants to do. I know my husband was completely overwhelmed at the thought of tackling this room. I think it's safe to say that it was a job which none of us wanted to really do either. I honestly wanted to quit about halfway through, and if I was on my own without Rachel and Jennifer, I most certainly would have stopped right then, mid-project, with an even bigger mess than the room had been.



In addition to figuring out what to do with the boxes of complete randomness, this task was also destined to include straightening out the shed so that we could stack the boxes of books that didn't fit on our shelves, as well as the few boxes which would need to be sorted sometime in the future. I hadn’t really planned on that organizing of the shed--but the need became apparent as the task progressed. Well... really as soon as I opened the shed door.







It’s been a rough few months around the Shannon-house. With moving, unpacking, the birth of our sixth baby, my extremely slow physical recovery, my constant battle with postpartum depression, a flooding septic system and crawl space, the subsequent repairs for those issues which lingered unfinished for two months, and most recently the death of my father-in-law things have been super stressful . Things have been especially difficult for my husband, and I know he has felt really kind of inundated when he is home.



Giving him a space, his own space in our new home will hopefully help him feel the love with which his room was cleared and created. And when you get down to it, that really is the essence of Cleaning Club now--love. It is love for one another and for ourselves and our families which drives our projects. We want to make our homes better places for living and loving. And well, the truth is -as we all know- love is messy. Some weeks it’s really messy. But without love- I know I’d be lost.

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Clean Through the Chaos

Today we got together for the first time after two weeks off for holiday hootenannies and the like. Shannon triumphed over an unresponsive minivan to get her brood here, and everyone braved the below freezing temps to get here. The project: The Trifecta of Clutter. It was to be a Hat Trick of organization. But, the cool thing with Cleaning Club, is that sometimes what you think you need to do doesn't really work, but something you didn't plan on getting done does!



The original trilogy included a window seat filled with fabric and sewing stuff, a cabinet that held the booze and some CDs, and the coat closet. Moving the sewing stuff into the coat closet was ill conceived, it became clear, but moving the cloth napkins and candles into the cabinet (which we thinned out the booze contents of and packed up all the CDs into a box to go live in the Shed of Ick) and the drawer from which the napkins came became the third to be organized.

The coat closet got thinned out and put back together.


The cabinet was no longer an eye sore.


And the napkin drawer got trimmed within an inch of its life. (It was filled to the top previously.)


And I thought of something I love about Cleaning Club, beyond the obvious. It is this: you have to go through this storm to get to the calm seas it brings. In other words, 14 people descend on your house. 18 people need to eat lunch, so suddenly the kitchen counters become filled with food which then spills out via children into the rest of the house. It is winter, so every one of those people brings in a coat, as well as other random items (dolls, purses, books, things to return to each other, gallon bottles of gin, etc...), that create large piles. The little kids play with a pile of toys in the tiny living room. Kids are everywhere. You pull a bunch of stuff out of your closets and cabinets and whatever, so there are piles of that. And, this time, I added to it with a pile of ten trash bags full of vintage clothing (long story). In short: there is disorder everywhere, and I am a Virgo. But, you know, there is so much sweet order on the other side of it that you weather the storm. You fight the waves and navigate through the mess and the kids and it's so worth it. And you're not in a little dingy out there all alone, you're on a good rig, with a three woman crew, and you are capable of anything. And short of momentary desires to send a kid off the plank, you just keep sailing.

And then everyone collects their piles, and cleans up their lunch and their toys, and they sail their separate ways. And you're home and everything is so much better for the chaos.

There is a life lesson in that effing long ass played out metaphor.

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Whilst Somewhat Incapacitated

Normally, I go into a complete panic and become rather unbearable for at least a day or two before my parents come for a visit. And this is after years of learning to let most of the little things just go. This visit from my parents coincided with having an itty, bitty new baby, living in a house into which we moved less than 2 months ago, and me feeling very frustrated as my recovery from birth had taken a seemingly giant leap backward over the weekend before Cleaning Club.

However, this Monday when my parents would be arriving, found me not at all stressed about the house or trying to do too much, because this Monday was Cleaning Club day! Rachel and Jennifer came over and not only helped me get everything straightened up, and the bathrooms clean, and the floors vacuumed; they also did most of this while I left and went to the chiropractor to try to mitigate some of the pain I had been in over the weekend.

Not only did they clean while I was gone, they also cuddled and snuggled Michael, changed his diaper and really tried to insist to my husband that he go chill and take a much needed break. Anyone who has had a newborn baby in the house can appreciate how much help it is just to have loving arms to hold the baby while running to a doctor's appointment!! But then to also come home to a house which was clean--well, that's the epitome of Cleaning Club, and the love which Rachel and Jennifer have just poured out upon me in such great measure.

When I returned from my appointment, we all had lunch. Then before heading home Rachel and Jennifer helped me to get some things put away in the entryway closet (where previously they had reassembled the shelves and helped me go through the random debris we had piled there when we moved). They also helped me hang the bulletin board , so I could start pinning up some of the kids' artwork which had been collecting since we moved. The other task--which for short little me would have involved ladders and lifting--that was finished, was Jennifer removing a very, very annoying door stopper which had been keeping the laundry room door from opening all the way. It was a small thing which took her only a couple minutes--but it has already made my life better! And instead of frazzled psycho-woman , my house got to be peaceful and calm for the rest of the day, despite our coming visitors, and I got to curl up in my favorite room with my wee little man drinking in the life I lead so full of abundant blessings.

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The Office of Slack

The fact that I am a slacker may not be evident immediately upon entering my home. With a minimalist decor, my house generally looks fairly tidy (could I use any more qualifiers in that sentence?). But, deep in the bowels of my home lies my office. And then my inner slacker-dom is glaringly evident.

My office being a cesspool has been true in every home I've had an office in. My office in my last house was a coat closet that just fit a large desk, which was usually shit piled. Despite the fact that I enjoy order in other parts of my home, I am able to function just fine thank you at a desk surrounded by chaos. I just focus on the task directly in front of me and ignore the rest.

In my new home (as of six years ago) I upgraded to a walk-in closet for an office. Because it is the only office space in the house, it it where all our office equipment lives, as well as homeschool supplies (that sit collecting dust), piles of paperwork from a job I no longer hold, toys, games, books, photos, children's artwork. It generally looks like where secretaries go for eternity when they get booted from heaven.

When it has been my turn for Cleaning Club, I mentally scroll through possible projects in advance, often landing first on something that seems do-able. Then I force myself to think about what I really DON'T want to do, that thing that keep jumping up with its hand raised going oh! me! me! me!--clean under my bed, tackle closets that would make Martha Stewart have a seizure, that kind of thing--and after telling that thing to shut up several times I finally go oh ok fine! And that's when I know I have a project that truly needs doing.

My office had been that project on my list a few times, but I'd dismissed it as too big, too gruesome, too hard. This week, though, I decided to just jump in and at least get started. Then I broke out in a cold sweat.



The thing is, I often underestimate what we can accomplish in a short amount of time, and I wondered with one clubber down--Shannon was home with the lame excuse of having just crammed an eight pound body through her delicate lady parts--what we could do. But, Jennifer and I jumped in to tackle the hell-hole nonetheless.

We took everything off a big set of shelves that housed kids games and activities. We put random pieces where they belonged, and got rid of a few (good-bye Cooties! You soul sucking creatures will not be missed!). We moved the shelves out of my office and in to my den, and rearranged all the games and puzzles on it. We pulled everything from the floor of my office out into the den. (A bonus from this is the ability to inflict your nostalgia on your friends in the process. Oh look, a collection of my poetry from high school! And this? This is an original copy of the first Ms. magazine? Impressed? Awwww, look at this cute picture!)



We took out a big piece of broken plastic that was supposed to facilitate my office chair freely rolling in and out from my desk, but since breaking into pieces, had only served to catch my chair wheel (and often my poor pinky toe) making me push even harder to get the hell out from behind my desk, and then sending large pieces of plastic soaring about on a windstream of profanity. We vacuumed the newly clean floor, discarded the chipped up plastic, and moved a small bookshelf into the corner. With everything deposited all over my once tidy den, Jennifer went home.



I will say, that this is unusual. In fact, unprecedented. We usually don't leave until the project is done. These were extreme circumstances, though, and we had accomplished what I had set out to accomplish in that session. The rest was up to me. But a strange thing happens in the Cleaning Club vortex, known by scientists as The Cleaning Club Effect. Once you are empowered by what you can accomplish, you ride that high for a few hours and no beast is any match for you. The beast had been immobilized, now it was time to go in for the kill. I tackled the shelving up high in the room that had previously been under a sort of Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. I won't look at you, and you will pretend not to exist. Shining light into this dark corner was to open Pandora's Box. Brazen from my earlier victory, I pressed on. I discarded. I reorganized. I moved. And, eventually, I'd done it!



Over the course of the rest of the day I processed through the contents of my office and den and filled my trash can and recycling container, cleaned off and organized my desktop and shelves. Now, as I write this, I'm sitting in a space that actually feels spacious and organized. An office that for the first time ever feels intentional. And the extension of the Cleaning Club Effect is that not only does it empower me to tackle and follow through on what seemed an insurmountable task, but it often has unforeseen emotional benefits. I feel different in this space. My space makes me feel more like a grown-up; makes my work feel more valued. The process wasn't just an exercise in organization, but one that made my inner slacker feel a little less slack.

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Outreach Program

We went and helped our friend, Sarah, get her kitchen whipped into shape at our very first session of the Cleaning Club Outreach Program! Read about the initial cleanup day on her blog, as well as her recent update about how this project has continued to bless her family. We love to see the Cleaning Club magic spread so far!

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We So Crafty

Today was my day to host Cleaning Club. Cleaning Club began as an offer to help wash dishes one play day. It has grown into three women and their collective 11 children (to be 12 late this year) rotating weekly through each other's houses undertaking projects too big, or too overwhelming for one mom to tackle alone. The kids mostly play and help watch the toddlers. The projects, which alone would likely take all day- if not days to accomplish, generally take about an hour to an hour and a half. Then we share the food which we all have, and eat lunch together.

It is such an enormous blessing and gift to me to have these women in my life. When I go to their houses, I get to go home with the satisfying feeling that I have truly helped another woman make her life and the life of her family just a tiny bit better. It feels great to clean other people's stuff, nothing like the drain I feel trying to clean and organize my own space. They also have such a unique set of gifts and talents, which I feel so blessed to get to experience and from which I might benefit and be inspired.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a "Before" picture to show what an inaccessible trash heap, dumping ground our art cabinet had become but here is the end result:

Here's a picture of the inside of each of those green bins:

As we were eating lunch, I had the idea that maybe my friends could help me to get prepared for dinner, as well, since I have been having so much trouble getting my act together enough to actually cook for my family in these early weeks of pregnancy. They chopped peppers and onions and cilantro, while I put on a pot of rice. All I need to do at dinner time is saute the chopped veggies, add the cans of tomatoes and beans, add a little wine and fresh lime juice...and then serve over the rice. If I am feeling motivated enough, I'll make some chipotle cornbread.

**This post originally featured on After the fire came a gentle whisper..., with the following comments:

faerieeva said...

Ooh... I love the organised look of that art cabinet. I am trying to get Joseph into crafting and colouring. So far, no go. *L* Though we had fun yesterday at my attempt to have him fingerpaint.

March 9, 2009 4:27 PM

Kat said...

What a great idea! What's cilantro though?

March 10, 2009 5:20 AM

Blondie said...

Ooh, nice work Shannon. You're like a Catholic version of thepioneerwoman.com Except for the cilantro (or coriander, whatever). Can't stand cilantro. Cheerio, Antigone.

March 12, 2009 12:11 PM

Kat said...

Aaaaaah - cilantro = coriander. Thanks!! :-)

March 14, 2009 2:37 PM

~SHANNON~ said...

Hi. I linked to you through the "Life, love, laundry" blog. I just had to comment on this post! A cleaning group is SUCH a super idea!! What an awsome resource to have. I'd love to know how that was started, or what kind of projects you all tend to tackle at eachothers houses? I'm so jealous!! What a great idea. ps. your dinner sounded yummy too:)

March 26, 2009 12:12 PM

Shannon said...

We basically started it after talking casually about it. One day while over Jennifer's house for a playdate--we washed her dishes together and cleaned off her counter....and it was born. We asked our friend Rachel to join us and voila! Cleaning Club was born. Mostly we do some bigger projects which would bee too labor-intensive or time-consuming to do alone with small children around. Things we've done: cleaning out cabinets, cleaning out and detail washing the fridge and freezer, an all over house cleaning, cleaning out closets, framing and hanging pictures, cleaning off the trash landing zone desk in the kitchen, caught up baskets upon baskets of laundry.....things like that. It's not only been helpful to regain some order in our homes--but also as a deep source of camaraderie amongst us. There's something very awesome about inviting people into your closets. LOL! It only takes one or two other willing people and a day where you can all meet consistently. It's amazing how quickly the projects go, as well as how very satisfying it is to do work at someone else's house. I actually prefer going to Jennifer and Rachel's houses to clean--as even though I really appreciate their help--it feels more satisfying to have helped them out. (And my guess is that they probably feel the same way.)

March 27, 2009 10:33 AM

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