i have "done something"

about shane's room.

if you notice over there on my BIG FAT TO DO LIST, for ages now, i've had "do something about shane's room" on the list. and it has sat there on the list, doing nothing. 

well yesterday, we "did something".

i couldn't put "clean shane's room".  that wouldn't really cover it.  i wasn't sure exactly how to phrase what is was that needed to be done in there, mainly because i don't really know the proper grammatical term for "set off 4 sticks of dynamite followed by much jackhammering and industrial vacuuming".  needless to say, it was a pit!

every saturday, one of his chores is to clean his room.  but at this point, that was just putting clothes in the basket, books on the shelf, toys in bins, etc.  anything else was WAY too big of an undertaking for a 9 year old boy on his way out the door.

sadly, i didn't think to take a 'before' picture, so i didn't bother with an 'after', but i describe to the best of my ability all the CRAP that was gotten rid of yesterday.  just imagine my junk drawer, bedroom-sized and filled with the 9 year old boy variety of random crap.

behind shane's door, there were about 20 plastic grocery bags.  why? "well i need them for when i go to the Y so i have something to put my wet stuff in after i swim." "HOW MANY DO YOU NEED???" he got rid of them all.

on the floor NEXT to the toy shelf, was an open box containing a remote control car of sorts that he had gotten for his birthday, IN JULY.  so we emptied a bin on the shelf that contained a mostly broken and incomplete plastic 'garage' set that he hadn't played with in at least 3 years, got rid of that, and put the rc car and all it's parts in the bin.

behind the toy shelf and crammed between the shelf and his dresser was so much indescribable junk that i wouldn't know where to begin.  more plastic bags, notes from teachers of classes he had LAST YEAR, papers from sunday school, cub scout stuff (he's not even in scouts this year), the tags off of every single new item of clothing he's gotten in the last year and a half, feathers, leaves, rocks, candy wrappers, drawings he did, drawings layla did, a broken checkerboard, legos, lego kit instructions, lego kit boxes (empty, of course), a pair of too-small underwear, an extension cord, a box that micah's shoes came in, etc, etc, etc.  and then, between his closet and bookshelf, there was a box.  it was the box his lamp came in.  he's had that lamp for well over a year.  and it was full of more random crap. 

as he's pulling this stuff out, i'm just looking at him in disbelief and asking repeatedly, "why do you have this?" "i dunno."

well it's done now.  the recycling bin is filled up, as is the garbage, since we didn't get picked up last week, so there are a few boxes and stuff like that that got tossed out in the garage until after the stuff gets picked up today.  then, directly to the cans!

phew!