“You Actually Did it, Mom.”
I have been on a major organizing kick. I have been buying magazines for a couple of years that mention “organizing” on the cover. I got a quote from a professional organizer. And we decided to give it a go ourselves first, to see how far we could get. I bought a book that I liked and I have been following the author’s steps of:
Sort
Purge
Containerize
Equalize
Lego “Before” Picture
I worked in my office all last week and got it up to speed, and this week I am working in the boy’s room. It’s a big job. I worked on Xander’s side of the bed on Sunday and we got a good start. I’m going to try to do one side of the room each day.
Today I worked on their Lego table. I had looked at it yesterday and I’d been asking them how it might make sense to organize it. Emerson said by color and shape.
I was driving by Target and I had some time so I went in to look. I found some plastic bins in 2 sizes. I got 12 small bins that stack and 6 large bins that stack. I thought we could use the small bins for the Legos themselves and the large bins for unfinished work and projects since they are always working on something. I also got a label maker, as recommended by the book.
I brought everything home and went through the mess of Lego. One of the hardest parts of getting everything organized is letting go of feelings of inadequacy or shame that I haven’t done this sooner. Anyway, I sorted every Lego into a box by color, and the organization system started to emerge. I got my label maker and labeled every container and every section. The label maker was very satisfying and fun. I tried to think about what might work and how to make it a useful system. I was lucky that I had a block of time when the children weren’t home to keep going and finish it. When they came home, they loved it. Emerson said, “You actually did it, Mom.”
It was one of those comments that goes both ways. One, it was a huge job and I was feeling pretty proud of actually getting it done, myself. On the other hand, that word “actually” makes me wonder if he feels like he can’t count on me to do what I say. This is particularly hard because I have had some health challenges the last couple of years and I run out of energy by 5 o’clock most days. I “actually” can’t physically do all I would like to do for our family. We have to get by on what we can do sometimes. I guess I was hoping they hadn’t noticed. So, there is a tinge of guilt and shame at my own inadequacy and imperfection. I’m going to breathe that off and feel proud of my accomplishment and that my accomplishments are growing. I am proud of what I’m doing in our home.
Lego after picture
I showed them all the parts and they really were engaged with the new system. Emerson also asked why I got stackable containers instead of drawers and he might be right–we can see after they start using the system. Drawers might be better. But I am going to see this as a great prototype–a good practice model. The label maker really made sense when I was sharing the system with the kids. They can engage with the labels and it helps everyone remember where everything goes. Now we can kick the tires and see what works.
They immediately wanted to play and that is a really inspiring thing. It will push me to get to the rest of their room this week. We already made one adjustment. We realized we needed a bin for “completed” kits. They get Lego kits for action figures they complete and then play with. We added an open bin for this. It was an old Duplo container but we labeled it and I think it will work. We’ll see and adjust…
