dispelling the myth

It has been quite humorous to hear from some of you about how I must have extra hours available to me because we seem to do so much. Ha! I am surprised you couldn't hear my mother laughing heartily at that suggestion!  For one thing; it is quite well known that I enjoy my sleep, specially in the morning.  I prefer to stay up late and watch crappy tv while I fluff around doing god knows what and then grumble that I have to rise before 9.  The other thing is, well, it all boils down to priorities.  This picture of our dining table, or should I say the table previously known as the dining table should enlighten you.

You see it became quite clear to me on the first day of school holidays (which also happened to be Good Friday) that having Mr Whizzme and Miss Whizzme at home together for days on end was only going to produce a riot of chaos.  My choice? fight it or ignore it.  I chose to ignore it.  There have been days when I have severely regretted this decision.  

I am happy to admit that I am quite the clutter queen with my collections of china and books and knick knacky things, but I do like them to be in. their. place.  I am a what I like to refer to as a pack stylist.  I live by packs.  Packs mean that things can be found - no matter what the occasion. Take my hand bag for example (I use this example as this seems to be quite the in thing in the blog world of late!)

Packs. Emergency pack, pack of wipes, pack of tissues, pack of pencils, small pack with meter change.  Easy to find.

Another example is the boot of my car:

Again packs. Medical pack, art pack, swimming pack, towel pack, shopping pack, beach pack, rain jacket pack*.  I'm sure you are getting the picture.

Anyway, back to the ignoring the chaos challenge.  By the end of Easter I was seriously fighting my urge to pack things away, but I held firm.  Well, I reasoned, Miss Whizzme and I were going to be away for a week anyway, it could wait.  Of course leaving a husband alone in a home with no supervision is just asking for trouble!  And then, we returned with a 5 day count down to Miss Whizzme's birthday party.  Therefore, I must confess that I then not only ignored the mess, I added quite liberally to it.  So, while maybe we might have benefited from having somewhere comfortable to eat our meals, and it would be nice not to have to leap over the washing to get into bed at night, overall I have really, really enjoyed these holidays.  

Tomorrow though, I clean!

Psst! if you want further details click on the photos to see the notes in flickr.

*sometimes the car boot also has an extra