Wednesday, November 07, 2007

The NON-Guest Guest Room.

Status: Feeling OK. So far I have managed to escape the yuckiness that is going around in the family. The baby hasn't gotten sick either. (Of course now that I have typed this you know we'll be getting it in the next five minutes.)

Hubby scored some great Packers tickets to this Sunday's game. They're the kind of tickets that are so good, you HAVE to go, even if the game IS on Sunday. The only babysitters we know (and trust, which matters most) are the ones who wouldn't babysit on a Sunday, because they go to our church. So the babysitting thing isn't happening. I suggested to Hubby to go ahead and invite his brothers, so they could all go. So far one brother is definitely coming. The other two are looking into it.

Guess I need to stop dumping stuff in the Guest room and make it actually inhabitable for...well...GUESTS!

One thing Hubby and I have gone around and around about since we owned our first home--he has insisted that we have a "guest room." A room in the house with a bathroom either IN it or really close to it, so that when family comes, they will have their own space. Every house we have ever bought or built, has had to have certain factors, and the all-important factor: a Guest Room.

I think it's kind of lame, personally. A room that sits untouched and unused 97% of the time? Oh, heck no. It MUST be used. Hubby likes to joke about my lax cleaning style: "If there's a shelf, Lara will pile something on it. And if there isn't a shelf, Lara will make a non-shelf into a shelf (like a chair or something) and pile stuff on it."

Nice, I know. We just have so much STUFF. I give to Goodwill and various other charities, I give away furniture and clothes and toys and THROW AWAY enought junk to make the equivalent of a contruction-sized dumpster, and we STILL have too much crap. But I digress...

So, lately, I've resorted to using the Guest Room as a Catch-all. I like to call it a "Multi-Purpose room." Sort of a Video Gaming/Clothes Folding/box storing/shopping spoils hiding/dumping off room, where I can just shut the door on it and Voila! it goes away, because NO ONE EVER USES IT.

I think I'm all smart and ha ha ha and everything and then Hubby decides to go and invite family, who will be descending in TWO days. So guess what I get to run around cleaning? THE GUEST ROOM. So I have to find a place for everything I've shoved in it and frankly that means shoving it somewhere else. Lovely.
I swear, all the junk I have makes babies or something, because I can't seem to get out from under all the STUFF!

Okay, I guess I'm ranting a little. It's hard to "simplify" your life when you have four kids (one of them being a baby) and a husband who is a workaholic.

Time to end the rant and get cleaning!

6 comments:

Michelle Miles said...

Shove it all in the closet. :D

Anonymous said...

I'm all for shoving in the closet. Or does your husband expect the guest room closet to stay empty too? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Don't shove in the closet! Then you'll have a mess to clean up when they leave. I've fallen into that pit before. It seems an idyllic fix, and you are stuck with a cruddy closet later.

Janey said...

I'm with Anon. If you put everything in the closet, it will make more mess later. I used to be a closetstuffaholic myself. Trust.

Lowa said...

We don't have a guest room. In fact, two of our boys need to share a bedroom. We have to use OUR bedroom as the "catch-all". I am SICK OF IT and have been slowly trying to organise.

Like you, we donate, sell, give away, throw away and it just keeps breeding! In my cleaning this past week, I found photos from just seven years ago and in the background of 100's of photos there was...NOTHING! It was BEAUTIFUL!


Less furniture, less toys, less clutter. So I guess at some point in the past seven years, something has happened. I am still trying to fix it! HELP!

Lynn Sinclair said...

Go through it quickly, make snap decisions about each item--toss, give away or keep. Put all your keep stuff in green garbage bags or boxes, and store in your basement or garage. Deal with that stuff when you have more time. Of course, there's always the chance you may forget about the bags. In that case, just give them directly to charity in 6 months (although I'd find that near impossible to do--I'd have to look through each bag/box).

Best of luck. Have fun with your guests!