Decluttering with a kid is tricky

Monday afternoon, I was proceeding with my decluttering by hitting my antique roll top desk. It's massive with tons of little drawers and nooks, not to mention five drawers on the sides. So, lots to go through. I found some floppy disks (seriously) and a zip disk. I'm kinda curious what's on them, but not enough to try to find an appropriate plug or whatever to read them. So into the trash they will go. I found three pairs of earbuds...and I just bought a new pair a week ago. I found 7 rolls of scotch tape, two tape dispensers with rolls on them, and 6 extra rolls for the dispenser. So I'm ready to tape some stuff. Like everywhere. I found 3 sheets of stickers, some Ghostbusters pins, pencils and pens to outfit an entire classroom, two 3-hole punches, a giant bag of crayons (half-gallon ziploc bag), about 15 post-it pads of various shapes, sizes, and colors, and a stack of empty notebooks about 8 inches tall. All in the space of one 40 minute tv show I was watching on Hulu.

I was pretty pleased with my progress and the way I was reorganizing things and how quickly it was all going. And then Asher woke up from his nap.

Within five minutes, he'd found the stickers and they were ALL off the pages and on his arms, shirt, legs, chairs, and me. I had no idea he was doing it but I should have: he was way to quiet. He was pretty pleased with himself: "Mommy look, I have stars! And a monkey! And Scooby-Doo!" This kid loves stickers, but Mommy hates scraping them off everything so he never gets them.

I set him up in the kitchen with half a dozen crayons and some paper and told him to draw me a picture. He was done in about 5 seconds and back to see what I was doing. He was literally right behind me in such a position that I couldn't move without knocking him into an open drawer or a chair or on the floor and he refused to move, so I picked him up and carried him into another room. So then he started crying.

After that, the decluttering/reorganizing was done. Luckily, I was to the finishing stage (put the box of stuff to scan on the desk, the box of stuff to go upstairs on the stairs, close the drawers) so I told him to go to his room but he refused, so I ended up carrying him to his room and dumping him on his bed. Where he kept crying. Elijah woke up from his nap and started crying as well.

Yesterday, while Austin took the boys on a walk after dinner, I hit the storage cart in the dining room and I discovered that, wine drinker that I'm not, I had 4 cork screws. How does that happen? I have no idea. I know I bought one in college because I had to have one for a class. I know one came from a nice bar set we got, along with a strainer, jigger, and stirrer. The other two are a mystery. So three went into the box. Scented candles that people give us as little gifts or stocking stuffers, into the box.

It's not hard to get rid of stuff except for when my children find the box and want to go through it. So it sits on the dining room table up high, but then Mom and Bob come over and say "Oh, you want to give away the monkey that sings and dances and your children laugh at?" I really do, because they play with it for five minutes every 10-14 days then walk away. They don't really like it like their other toys, plus it's a stupid toy (one of those shelf sitting monkeys...we have TWO, one sings and dances, one has a creepy recording of children laughing) that no one really wants. Mom takes notebooks and pads and some other things, but leaves the monkeys out so I get to wait until the boys are asleep for a second time to get rid of them. Hopefully they'll STAY in the box. And no more will come in the house.