I went up to the boys' room, thinking for sure that Xander probably had put Guy's shirt away, thinking it was his own. (Xander's number is 17, Guy's number is 7...it's easy to see how confusion could ensue.)
When I'm really on top of my game, I guide and teach the boys how to do their own laundry. Put it in the basket, carry a full basket downstairs, load the washer, move to the dryer, carry upstairs and put away! One time Xander commented, "This is taking FOREVER!" and I replied, "Yes, son, now you're starting to understand the whole concept of laundry."
Well, doing laundry takes forever, and teaching two young boys to do it takes DOUBLE forever. So, since I've been less-than-my-ambitious self for the past 28 weeks, their tutelage has been reduced to "I bring it to your room and you better put it away, or ELSE, mister!"
So, I looked through Xander's closet, which oddly only had 10 shirts in it, none of which were Guy's. Hm. Maybe he put some shirts in his pants drawer.... AAAgh! When I opened his pants drawer, and his shorts drawer, pajama drawer, underwear drawer... fountains of mishmashed, squished (but clean) clothes came spewing out of all of them! T-shirts wrapped up with clean underwear. Pants in knots with the church shirt. Cub scout uniform scrunched between pajamas and more underwear.
I took the whole lot and threw it on the floor. Still no soccer shirt. There were no clothes on the closet floor (Xander knows I look there), but when I CLOSED the closet door... AAAgh! A four foot high stack of (clean) clothes, smashed and formed into the crack behind the door toppled down! More of everything, mixed together and squished, crumpled, and stuffed. No sign of Guy's shirt.
Then I was starting to get a little crazy. I peeked into Guy's dresser drawers. Phew. Everything in place. Hm... I looked in the DRAWERS OF GUY'S DESK! KASPLOOSH! Xander had stuffed HIS clothes into GUY'S desk drawers! You've got to be kidding me! More underwear, t-shirts, pants galore right on top of Guy's markers and crayons and desk stuff.
I threw everything into the middle of the room and unkindly dragged Xander up to re-put-away his clothes. "I can't find Guy's shirt, and I have the sneaking suspicion that YOU took it and STUFFED it in some crazy place!" He started sorting through his clothes, found HIS soccer shirt, and declared "Oh hey! Here's MY soccer shirt! That means the shirt I took downstairs this morning, to get ready for my game, was actually Guy's!" So, he returned the shirt to Guy and began to hang clothes. (See, in the end I had the culpable suspect all along)
The saddest thing of all is that I know exactly where Xan got his organizational tendencies...moi! Deep in my soul, I can't help thinking, "If I know exactly where it is, and can get it when I need it, then it is organized enough!" Xander's mishmash of clothes, while wrinkly, still allow him to find what he wants pretty quickly. If he had his way, he'd have a huge heap of clean clothes in the closet, and never put anything anywhere else.
The second-to-saddest things is that I'm going to have to tell him that some other brain types don't like to SEE our stuff in piles, so we have to find ways to organize that keep others happy, even if it seems like overkill to us.
I'm having an organizational weekend of my own, coincidentally. I'm deep into the book "Organizing for your brain type," which is helping me realize why I feel such angst when others try to impose their "systems" on me, which I hate. So, to be proactive, I'm implementing as many techniques that fit my style as possible (in one embodiment this means everything is hanging on a wall somewhere, because I NEED to be able to SEE it). I still love stacking things on my dresser, bedside table, desk, and counter, but for the sake of the OTHER humans in my house, I'm starting to hang things up instead...and occasionally stuff things into Guy's desk drawers.
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