What's in a pile?

We are buried in piles around here of late.

Piles of Goodwill stuff.
Piles of clothes too small for kids that need to be sorted and packed away.
Piles of Halloween decorations to be boxed up.
Piles of paperwork to be filed.
Piles of bedding, toys and misc. stuff to be sorted into various bedrooms.
The ever-present piles of laundry and dishes.
Piles of beautiful craft stuff that I don't get time to use.
Piles of mending and sewing projects next to the sewing machine.

*long sigh* Yesterday I looked around at all the piles and became paralyzed. I didn't know which pile to tackle first. Most of these piles came to be because we virtually tore the house apart. You see, we are going through a wonderful change here, and that change includes doubling our living space. We still manage the same apartment complex, but we now have 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (which is so wonderful), and a play room complete with couches that the kids can jump all over instead of ruining my nice one. It was getting to the point that our mood at home was frenzied because everyone was on top of each other all the time. Now we can all escape to a quiet part of the house when needed, and have a little more space to spread out. I know God is mindful of us because he put this opportunity in front of us as a way to have more living space and save a little money too. My main complaint about living in the Bay Area is the cost of living. Just renting a house around here will set you back almost 2-grand. It's absurd. We are saving about $500 a month by staying on here as managers and renting part of our place instead of renting a home. As much as I would love to, there is no way we can buy a house here right now. I'm not sure I want to buy a house here anyway. The manager job is getting old, but we are willing to do so for a little longer.

This is what I call the dresser dance. As soon as we knew we were gaining more space we had dear family and friends offer dressers, desks, and I even scored a free couch and loveseat. All of the sudden we had dressers galore, and so I spent a day (who am I kidding, it took me several sporadic days) switching kids clothes around and moving dressers all over the house. That's where the pile of kids clothes that are too small came from. I separated clothes from all four kids drawers that are way too small, yet they seemed to fit them a short time ago. I told the kids they did NOT have my permission to grow anymore. Logan looked up at me and said, "but Heavenly Father said I could grow!" Bah, foiled again. Why do kids have to grow up so fast?

Squid has taken advantage of Mom being more spread out by getting her tentacles into everything. She recently flooded the top two kitchen drawers where all the silverware and kitchen tools live with the water jug that sits above them on the counter. These markers were tame after that. She is moving so fast these days that I can't keep up with her exploratory messes.

My goal is to have all these piles conquered before Christmas so we can enjoy the season without clutter in the way.

Back to work!