Kids and Clutter

I don't know whether it is the fact that I am at the end of my pregnancy and venturing into the "nesting" mode...

or the fact that we have been packing up the house in preparation for our move to Ohio and there are boxes all over the place.

Either way, though, it seems (to me) as though the kids have been purposely trying to make MORE clutter than ever before!

They are like little tornadoes... leaving massive amounts of MESS behind everywhere they go. It is quite honestly beginning to drive me completely bananas. Why, oh, why can't they just pick up after themselves???

I was thinking this very thing, and getting very overwhelmed and frustrated one day, when I saw a beautiful poem on a friend's blog, and knew providentially that I was meant to see it.

One of these days (and all-too-soon I'm sure), I will no longer hear the "pitter-patter" of little feet clomping through my house, wreaking havoc wherever they go. I will no longer have muddy, chubby little hands leaving dirty smudges on everything they touch. I will no longer scream out in the middle of the night because I have stepped on some small, annoying, and PAINFUL toy that was left in the middle of the floor. I will no longer have little people with big imaginations, pretending to be pirates and mermaids in the bathtub, while pouring water all over the bathroom floor. And I will no longer take my shower interrupted, with the presence of dozens of bath toys at my feet, while hearing tiny little voices gleefully telling me to draw pictures for them in the steam on the shower door.

I needed to be reminded to take a breath in the midst of all the clutter. To overlook it and instead, see it as a sign that there is the presence of beautiful life inside my home, innocently playing, without the fear and worry that comes with adulthood. I need to be reminded to love the wonderful chaos inside my home... clutter and all.

Hope you enjoy the poem as much as I did...

"The Toy-Strewn Home"
by Edgar Guest

Give me the house where the toys are strewn,
Where the dolls are asleep in the chairs,
Where the building blocks and the toy balloon
And the soldiers guard the stairs.
Let me step in a house where the tiny cart
With the horses rules the floor,
And rest comes into my weary heart,
For I am at home once more.
Give me the house with the toys about,
With the battered old train of cars,
The box of paints and the books left out,
And the ship with her broken spars.
Let me step in a house at the close of day
That is littered with children’s toys,
And dwell once more in the haunts of play,
With the echoes of by-gone noise.
Give me the house where the toys are seen,
The house where the children romp,
And I’ll happier be than man has been
‘Neath the gilded dome of pomp.
Let me see the litter of bright-eyed play
Strewn over the parlor floor,
And the joys I knew in a far-off day
Will gladden my heart once more.
Whoever has lived in a toy-strewn home,
Though feeble he be and gray,
Will yearn, no matter how far he roam,
For the glorious disarray
Of the little home with its littered floor
That was his in the by-gone days;
And his heart will throb as it throbbed before,
When he rests where a baby plays.