The Big Dig

God help me, I've started cleaning Ben's room.  Everyone thinks her kid has a messy room, but Ben's room causes one to think of the word "rubble."  It's like an excavation project except that instead of one of those little sieves and a brush, my tools are rubber gloves and a big black contractor bag.  Here is "before":





Routinely, I'd find him sleeping in a tiny "clean" spot on the bed, surrounded by crap, with a towel or something pulled over his legs b/c his covers were all on the floor.  That's probably bad, huh?  Thing is, I HATE to nag.  I hate to have to ride them to clean up, I just want them to magically have inherited some (clearly recessive) clean gene.  Anyway, it had gotten to the point that he was asking to sleep in Lily's as-yet-unoccupied room b/c his room kinda creeps him out.  He claims that it is "too big," but mostly I think the chaos just bums him out.  So I plunged in.  As of this evening, I just have stuff in bins, out from under the furniture, floor swept, bedding in the laundry.

Some highlights of the adventure.  This was in his little doorway to the porch:


I don't want to know.

I also found this, which is a whiskey bottle containing a plastic straight-razor, a policeman, and some foam:

I'm thinking we slap a title on it, like "The straight Blue Line" or something and submit it to an art show.

The Mystery of the Plastic Cups was solved when 10 were dug out of the debris.  The washing machine is off the hook for the Mysterious Sock Disappearances b/c there was an ENORMOUS pile in Ben's room.  The reunion of the socks after they're laundered will be a tearful one.  Unless the washer DOES eat them.

So, I must continue the Big Dig.  And I'm on the hook for making his bed look like a pirate ship.  I'm such an idiot.