Christmas Cleaning

I have let the kids "get away with" a lot in the "Game Room" because trying to get them to make it really neat and clean is, well, stressful-it involves a great deal of yelling and in the end I do 90% of the work anyway. This week I decided that these darned kids are so spoiled that they have to get to work if they want to make room for this year's Christmas presents-I mean, the coal has to go SOMEWHERE!

Yes, that IS a drink in my hand!

The truth is, I want this room a bit more organized and I plan to send the dining room furniture to be restored in January so I might need the table that the kids use as a storage zone. In addition, we want to do some painting and make some changes in the Game Room so we definitely need to do some clearing out. The problem is that our children are far enough apart in age that the "old" toys (can you say "Thomas the Tank Engine" ?) are played with by the younger children. However, this does not stop grandparents, aunts, and uncles from giving the kids more gifts every year so the collection just grows and grows.

I literally give away garbage bags full of toys to charities every year. This does not include the broken toys we have to throw away. Come to think of it, it doesn't mention the "favorite" toys that I find ways to fix several times before they are unused for a year or so on their way to the next child.

The driving force for some of the cleaning is the fact that my parents, brother, and one of my sisters, will be here for Christmas. Then, we'll have some of my in-laws and my nieces and nephews over for a few days next week. They have all seen our house "as is" and know the chaos of our lives, but their visit, and "don't you want to have space for new toys?", becomes a rallying cry for cleaning up and discarding unused and/or unwanted toys (I hear there is an island for them somewhere ...). Honestly, I don't expect to be as "done" as I would like tomorrow, but that is when guests start arriving so whatever we can get done, well, that is what is done.