While I've been peeling carrots, I've been looking around my kitchen at all the things I should probably clean out and rearrange and I noticed that my homework cart was in the kitchen. It shouldn't be, it lives in the dining room but someone (perhaps the little girl who rolls it around the house asking everyone if they'd like to buy a sandwich from her cart) left it in the kitchen and then I realized that I don't think I shared the homework cart here and really, it's a homework cart. This is exactly where it belongs.
The homework and the arts and crafts sections of our lives, though, were not going well. There were pencils everywhere. Markers, crayons, scissors, glue, index cards, the stapler and the Hebrew-English dictionary were not on the table in an orderly fashion. They were strewn across the table and I found myself shoving it all to the middle so we could eat dinner. I didn't like that.
Enter Ikea. The savior for almost anything (anyone) organizationally challenged. Like me.
First, it's blue.
Second, it has three sections. One for the supplies, one for the three hole puncher and the binder filled with lined paper and the third level - the one that contains all the papers that everyone wants to show me while I want to be making dinner. Sometimes they even want to show me these papers while I am in the bathroom so they slide them under the door. I'm willing to bet money they do not do that to Josh.
These are not papers, mind you, that need to be signed or worked on. These are the papers that the kiddies complete in class and then because the teachers don't want to be the ones to have to throw them out, they come home in color-coded plastic folders that get dumped onto my couch.
No more.
It took about a week, but now they know.
All papers that do not require a parental signature get placed in the paper section of the cart, where I can look at them when I have a second.
My couch is clear (of papers. Not of laundry waiting to be folded. No one get too excited here).
My table is better, it's somewhat clear but I wouldn't call it empty. A miracle worker, I am not.
But I do have a cart.
I smile every time I see it.
It's the little things in life.
:)
Jen