Apparently the urge to clean, like spring itself, comes late to me. There are still hockey bags in our hallway. Ski boots in the closet. Too-heavy coats (although not full-on ski jackets) in the cubbies and I am tired of it, and tired of the piles in the kitchen, and tired of the piles in the bedroom, and tired of the piles in general. Maybe even tired enough to actually do something about it.

But not alone.

I called three kids into the hallway today for cubby cleaning. TWO jackets, I said, and ONE pair of boots, and they have to be RAIN BOOTS, not the snow boots Wyatt claimed to want to keep out. Sweatshirts, fleece jackets, yadda–up to your closet. Other, extra stuff in the hat part of the cubby–put it away! Magpie Lily was the only one with piles of extra stuff.

The time has come when I finally begin to wish they all had their own room. They still share, and I’m happy with that as a sleeping arrangement, but they need to be able to take their own stuff to their own space and make choices about it, and at this point, that’s really not an option. They have miscellaneous spaces–Rory’s mushroom house, Lily’s desk, etc–but we need whole areas. If we redo the house as planned, we’ll have them, but it’s not clear when. If we can, by some miracle, build this summer (or, more likely, this fall) still, then we can hold out. If this is next summer’s project, then a room re-do of some kind is in order. No one wants to sleep alone (and no one ever will) but we could move and re-arrange to create more and brighter space. We could even paint. But I’d rather get the building done and do it all in one fell swoop….