Enough with the philosophical stuff for a minute. We all want to be better parents and I’m sure, like me, many of you are constantly grappling with ways to do this – make dinner more fun, pack healthier lunches, watch less TV, play more, listen better… But for now I want to talk about all the STUFF and the endless picking up!!

I am sure I am not the only one who sometimes feels that parenting is all about picking up stuff, cleaning it off, and moving it around. Packing toys away, picking up marbles that have rolled into the kitchen to try and kill you while you rush to get dinner, wiping counters, cleaning pee off weird places (it may be that this is particularly true with boys), packing lunches, putting spare clothes into a bag for the 2 hours you’ll be out with the kids because you never know what might happen, loading dishwashers and washing machines, unloading dishwashers and putting dishes on thetable, putting clothes away, clorox wiping everything, picking up yesterday’s clothes, and socks from last week, cleaning out lunchboxes, hanging up soggy swimmies and towels and mittens and socks again…Oh, and trash cans!? It never ends.

Why is there so much stuff?Sometimes it is just relentless, and rather fatiguing.

Now if this blog had “super” in the name, instead of UNsuper, I would list 20 easy ways to organize the stuff “to make clean up a snap”, or “to keep your home beautiful”, or “to teach children about order” or some such. But this is not one of those blogs. This is the one where we admit that although we are constantly shopping for storage baskets, buckets, tubs, tins, shelves and cubbies, the STUFF gets out and finds it way into the furthest, deepest, darkest recesses of our lives. And under our feet, and in between the couch cushions, and sometimes, horribly, even into bed.

Sigh. I think all we can do is try to have a place for things (toy buckets, laundry baskets, stationery tins etc…) and try to teach kids that clean up is part of life (because it IS!!!). And then recognize that sometimes none of it works and we are going to spend more time than we like picking up stuff, cleaning it off, and moving it around.