chosen chaos

I got so wrapped up in telling you about the momven­tion of my cen­tury I for­got about the other projects I did!

I love these too and am used to you lov­ing what I love!  It’s a win win kind of place around here!

First… the school box.  Since the early day care days I have kept some things.  Not all things.  Just some.  Usu­ally if a hand or foot print is involved it’s an auto­matic keeper.  Also if there is some­thing “per­son­al­ized” on it… along the lines of I’m three and my favorite color is ele­phant.  Keeper.

When Biggest started school last year the deci­sion of what to save became slightly more dif­fi­cult.  I seeded through what I would want if I were him.  And even though I know that’s prob­a­bly noth­ing I kept things any­way.  But this project is not about the WHAT, it’s about the WHERE.  I wanted a con­ve­nient, easy to access, store, put away, etc method to hang on to the items I decided to keep for years to come.  I decided on a plas­tic file tote and hang­ing files.  I used my label maker (love!) and labeled a folder for each year of school, group­ing together the early years into one.  I went through my giant bas­ket of things, put them in the right folder and stashed it away for the year.  In my “office” I have a metal divided folder thingy and through­out the year I put the school keep­ers there.  The plan being at the end of each school year, I’ll do a final sort/​pitch/​save, put the cho­sen ones away for safe keep­ing and be done with it.

**The key to this method is to never let them see what you pitch.  This hap­pened once and I quickly recov­ered by blam­ing it on their sis­ters who love tash.  Close call.

Sec­ond… the plas­tic eggs.  The girls were bap­tized in April of 2011, fol­low­ing the ser­vice we hosted a cel­e­bra­tion at our place.  I planned an egg hunt for the other chil­dren and it was a lot of fun.  Since then I’ve had two packs of plas­tic eggs unused and star­ing at me each time I opened the coat closet.  Each time I would think damn I really need to do that egg thing I see on Pin­ter­est.  Each time I would shut the door and for­get again.  It finally made the to-​​do list and I’m embar­rassed with myself that it truly only took five min­utes of my time.  The boys love it.  The girls do too, for a cou­ple of min­utes any­way.  One broke and I didn’t care at all because each plas­tic egg 5 cents after you do the math.

While I was mak­ing these I couldn’t help but think of all­lll the pos­si­bil­i­ties these had to offer.  You could do states and cap­i­tals… state out­lines and their names… Pres­i­dents and order… oppo­sites… math prob­lems… end­less, end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties.    For SUCH a cheap price and pretty much even less effort.  There will be more plas­tic egg activ­i­ties at my house for sure.

Third.… the aban­doned kitchen craft table.  When we got a new kitchen set we decided to move the old one to the base­ment in the play room.  This also meant giv­ing the beer ping pong table up to a good home at the local col­lege so we had room for it.  (Don’t sigh for me too much, we now have an offi­cial table that can travel with us!)  I try to keep all writing/​coloring/​crafting to the play­room as much as pos­si­ble.  But the boys are always com­ing upstairs ask­ing me how you spell Happy Birth­day and Iwish­we­could­comeoverand­playa­gain.  They bring a small piece of paper and a bro­ken crayon and by the time I get to the sec­ond p all is lost.

Once the back to school craze was over I went to the Tar­get clear­ance and picked up some of the lined name cards that you’ll find in Kinder­garten class­rooms across Amer­ica and some ship­ping tape.  I thought of the most com­mon words they ask for, wrote them on the name cards and taped them to the table.  I don’t care an ounce about the con­di­tion of this table so the tape didn’t bother me at all.  I also added the sight-​​words Biggest brought home from school last year.  I have a ton of the cards left and plan to add to the table as needed.  We’ve had two birth­day par­ties since this and the boys loved going down to make the birth­day cards.  Even Mid­dle said, Mom I didn’t even need your help for how to spell Happy Birthday!

Happy Invent­ing!

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