HADA 2015: Day 15

Let's just pretend Days 10-14 never happened. They were wonderful, and terrible, and busy, and unproductive. I tried to clean my room once, but I only made 3 square feet of progress in 20 minutes, after which I was distracted by more urgent things.

But yesterday, I got back on the horse. Cleaned the kitchen table so I could have a staging ground to tackle this:

That's the desk in the corner of my kitchen. Where Valerie is supposed to do her homework. Where I need to hook my laptop up if I need to print anything. (See it there, balanced precariously on top of the huge pile of crap?)

And I did it. I have no idea how long it took, because my time was riddled with interruptions. Paper plate insects with the girls. Marbles in the side yard. Lunch. Vinegar and baking soda volcanoes. Dinner. But it did get done.

I still need to do the top shelf, but it's actually not as bad as it looks, because I just did it a few weeks ago. It just has a lot of boxes, so it looks deeper than it really is.

One of my non-HADA life goals is to include my kids more in the day-to-day stuff of life. Since it's April, this means including them in my HADA projects, if possible. We did alright on this today. Dorothy helped to wash the dishes. Valerie helped to sort the pens/markers/crayons/etc. (Aside: Is there a generic term for those? Implements of colorization? Draw-thingies? My drawers are not currently labeled, because I have one that contains paints, markers, crayons, pens, pencils, etc., which all seem to fit together categorically, but I don't know what to call them. "Writing implements" doesn't cover paints, but "coloring implements" doesn't cover pens. Yes, I am totally over-thinking life.)

While I was cleaning the desk, I shoved a few things into the "Mama Only" drawer, which can now barely close. So I dumped it out and organized it, too.

Before:

After:

It might not look that much better at a glance, but I can easily grab what I need, now, and that was my intention.

As for daily stuff: I did get the table cleared both before dinner from the desk-mess, and after dinner from the dinner-mess. The dishes are not done, and the laundry is currently backed up a bit due to a stomach bug, but I can get to the sink, so it's not the worst it has been this month.

And, with a clear table to play on, my family was able to sit down to an enjoyable game of Zooreka after dinner. I understand the sentiment of the whole, "Ignore the messy house, and focus on your kids," advice, but for those of us who tend towards letting the dishes pile up without well-intentioned poems telling us to, it's nice to be reminded once in a while that family board games start with clean kitchen tables.