The other day I drove past shirtless guy's house. It was a cold November day, grey and wet, and there was a man outside raking leaves.

This man was wearing a green T-shirt.

If this is not blowing your mind right now, go back and read about my neighborhood semi-nudist.

I drove past two more times that day, staring at the house. Was that the right house? Was I sure? Had I just imagined it? And every time, I came up with the same conclusions.

Yes, that was shirtless guy's house. And yes, a man wearing a shirt had been outside raking leaves.

I have so many unanswered questions now.

Was that even the same guy? His distinguishing characteristic in my mind has always been his big hairy naked chest. With a T-shirt on...I just can't be sure. Maybe it was a relative or a friend or a neighbor. Maybe shirtless guy died of pneumonia and a regular, shirt-wearing individual bought his house. I can't be sure.

If it *was* shirtless guy, what could have happened to make him start going about fully clothed? Did the neighbors complain enough? Did someone leave a basket of T-shirts on his porch? Did his wife wake up one morning and say, "Honey, I am so tired of looking at your grey, hairy belly that if you don't put a shirt on today I'm out of here?"

Or maybe, just maybe, he suddenly, after all these years, developed sensation in the nerves of his chestal area. Maybe he went outside one morning and said to himself, "Hey, it's cold out here. I think maybe I'll put a shirt on today."

What a novel idea.

I've been spending a lot of time on hold with customer service lately. We're having a refrigerator melt-down around here (literally--it stopped keeping things cold) and it has turned into a long, drawn-out drama of me on the phone with various help lines, trying to convince them that YES, in fact, they SHOULD repair or replace my fridge.

The telephone...aka the tool of doom that sucks hours of my day away. Photo by modomatic on Flickr.

Today, after I had been on the phone for 52 minutes (I know, because I looked at my handset and it told me) and my girls had been fending for themselves during all this time because I was occupied, I heard loud wailing from the other room. It didn't sound like urgent somebody-is-bleeding kind of wailing, but it was loud and sad, nonetheless. I peeked in the room and saw two red-faced girls, tears running down their cheeks, clearly having an issue they couldn't resolve.

And so I interrupted the floor supervisor who was in the middle of telling me how there was no possible way he was going to help me out.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" I said (okay, maybe yelled) into the receiver. "I'm going to have to put you on hold." And then I threw the receiver down and walked away.

And that felt good.

Or... reason #1,240 why parenting is making me a better person.

I am not a neat and tidy person.

Shoes? I like to kick 'em off when I come in the door. Or when I'm sitting at the couch or working at my desk. I end up with little shoe piles all over the house.

Same with papers. Mail? Pick it up, sort through it, set it down on the table. Need to use table for dinner. Move piles of mail to the bookshelf or the coffee table or the kitchen counter or whatever other flat surface looks like it needs a pile of clutter.

Books? Stack them up wherever you find them. Laundry? Will find its way to the closet eventually.

There are just so many other things in the world that I'd rather be doing than cleaning. Pretty much *any* other thing, as a matter of fact.

I functioned reasonably well with my untidy ways as a single person, or as a person sharing a home with just one husband (note that I said reasonably well, not REALLY well--there have been plenty of times I've found myself soaring around the house in a panic, looking for a lost shoe, or bill that needs to be paid, or other crucial item that I've misplaced).

But now there are five of us in the house, and only one person in our entire family has any inclination to ever keep things neat on her own. (Lucy, bless her heart, truly enjoys having a place for everything and everything in its place. Whenever I'm trying to clean up, I offer to "let" her assist me, and then she swoons to Eric when he comes home, "Mama let me organize the desk today, Daddy!" Best. Day. Ever. for her.) But the rest of us, were we left to our own devices, tend to function more like the balls in a pinball machine, careening wildly around our own little world of flashing lights and bouncing pieces and chaos.

Which doesn't work so well in a family of five. The clutter multiplies, breeds, and spreads, and the house because dysfunctional so fast it's almost frightening.

And so...I'm finding myself forced to get my act together. Not because I've learned to like cleaning any better. But because I do like the way my home looks when it is clean. And because my world is not sustainable when  every surface is covered in sweatshirts, newspapers, rain boots and crayons.

It's just not really a choice anymore. Having all these kids means I HAVE to clean things up.

(Please note: if you have been in my home lately or plan to be there in the future, please do not take this post as an indication that you should actually expect my home to be clean when you see it. Merely take it as an indication that I am *trying* to make it that way...and that it's most likely better than it would have otherwise been).

Here's what I'm doing:

Having the kids pick up the living room every single day, usually right before we're getting ready to set the table and eat dinner (since the table's going to need to be cleared so we can eat at it anyway). They do not like this. They always react in dismay. "We have to clean up the whole living room?" they moan, as if I've just told them to scrub Buckingham Palace with a toothbrush. And I heartlessly tell them that yes, they do have to clean the entire living room, and then we do it. If at least the living room, which is what people see when they walk in the door, gets tidied pretty regularly, it doesn't get too bad.

Being merciless about papers. This is really a hard one for me. I always think I need to keep things because I *might* need them. Coupons I might use if I might get to the store this week. Magazines I *might* want to finish reading. So I'm trying to just let go. Unless I know, for sure, that I will definitely use that coupon? Toss it. A cleaner house is worth more than $1 off Pull-Ups. I'm already heartless about my kids' crafts. And papers I really do need to keep? I have a couple of different file boxes, one in the kitchen and one in the office. They have different sections and categories, so that I can at least attempt to have organized bundles of papers, vs. big messy bundles of papers. I use them for papers that I feel I *must* hang on to (bills to be paid, receipts I think I need, important notes from school, etc.) It would probably be better if I had just one file box in one location, but hey--it's a work in progress. They are, at least, a place to *contain* papers, rather than just having them in stacks around the house.

Getting three things done before I leave the house in the morning: Making all the beds (the girls' make theirs, I do Eric's and mine); making sure the dining table and kitchen counters are cleaned of dishes (this might mean the dishes are all in the sink, but at least they are contained to one spot, not scattered all over the place); and wiping off the bathroom sink and counter (so it's not littered with hair ties and my makeup bag, and there are no globs of toothpaste waiting in the sink).

 On the days that I actually manage to do these three things, plus the tidy-the-living room-in-the-evening routine, it means that at least the public areas of my house look somewhat presentable. It's not Martha Stewart, by any means. But it's something. (Those of you with clean homes are probably laughing at me, that these basic things are my minimum standards.)

The laundry still gets away from me. I cannot seem to manage to find a good routine for actually putting it AWAY once it's washed, dried and folded. And the kids' bedroom (and Eric and I's bedroom, let's be honest) are frequently messy. And the playroom? It's usually best to just close the door and walk away.

What can I say? My name is Jennifer, and I'm a recovering mess-a-holic.

Admitting you have a problem is half the battle, right?

These days, it's just me and Evie hanging out together most mornings. Lucy's in kindergarten, Beth is in second grade, and except for a couple of hours a week when she's in preschool, that leaves just me and Evie.

It's really quite a change. I've never had one-on-one time with a 3-year-old before. When Beth was this age, I had a 1-year-old Lucy distracting me, plus Evie herself on the way. When Lucy was 3, I had kindergartener-Beth plus evil 1-year-old Evie.

And now, this. Large chunks of time with a single child. A child who is able to walk (although she suckers me into carrying her all the time) and to talk (about lots of interesting things) and to put her own shoes on (though they're usually on the wrong feet).

Evie and I don't generally do anything major on our mornings alone together. A lot of times we go out and run errands. She loves the bank, where all the tellers fawn on her and give her candy (except on Friday, when they give her cookies.) She's less fond of the grocery store, which is too lengthy for her attention span. Yesterday found her bored to tears, hanging halfway out of the grocery cart, moaning repeatedly "Get me out of here! Get me out of here!" Other times we just come back home, and I clean, or work on articles, and she paints or draws or makes a huge mess with Play-Dough. But we also find time for snuggling together on the couch, or drinking a cup of tea together (she likes raspberry, I like chai) or doing a puzzle or reading a book. It's a lot easier to make time for these little moments when I only have to read *one* book or do *one* puzzle, not three different puzzles or books or games all at once. I still like the way my girls are close together in age and such good playmates...but there might have been something to be said for spacing them out a little bit more too.

The other day I thought Evie had school, but I drove to the preschool to discover it closed, the parking lot empty, and I remembered belatedly the teachers' conference that was going on that day. Evie was so disappointed at not going to school that I promised her something fun--so we went to the park and played in the pale October sunshine.

I can tell that mornings like this are fleeting--I don't have another baby growing up into a 3-year-old, after all, and somehow I want to save them up to remember. So I suggested that we take a picture together on my phone.

Here we are, me and my buddy.

After that, Evie wanted a turn with the phone camera, so I let her (I don't think I would have let my other girls have my camera when they were only 3).

First, an attempt to take a picture of me (umm, she got part of my leg, at least).

Then a photo of the swing.

Then another mommy-photo attempt. Hey, who needs eyes or a forehead? They're highly over-rated.

Then a surprisingly good picture of the playground, with only a little bit of three-year-old finger in the corner.

And, finally, a picture of mommy's entire face.

Evie is still not a pushover. She still does things her own way, in her own time. If, for instance, I tell her to put her shoes on before her hat, because shoes are a more essential item than hats and we are running short on time, she might--just must--shove a hat on her head anyway, before picking out said shoes, and then turn to her parent with a devilish gleam in her eye and say, "Too late."

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do with this child.

But she also has a special sweetness to her. Whenever she falls down (which she does often, because she never ever walks when she could run full-speed or hop or twirl), I pick her up and she wraps her arms around my neck super-tight, and I'm glad I still have a little bit of a baby in her. Yes, I'm treasuring our mornings together, for the entertainment value if nothing else. Evie is not always easy, but she is also not ever boring. Yesterday she said to me: "Mama, if sharks were real, and if one came in our house, I would get a ray gun, and I would kill it."

No need to worry about sharks when Evie and her ray gun are around.