Things No Mother Should Ever Have to See

So we started clearing out the girls' room in order to start the big makeover.

First it was all the toys. Have I mentioned I hate clutter??? Well, children are the top producers of clutter. So, it's not just the Polly Pocket box. It's every stinkin' little piece of Polly Pocket's clothing, down to her 1/8"long shoes, most of which, by the way, were NOT in the box. Disassembled pieces of Polly P's cruise ship furniture. Polly's accessories - purses, hats, cell phone, etc. Oh, yes, I had the kids do the toy clean up, but those are the things that I found under the beds and stuffed in corners. Apparently Polly is pretty scatterbrained because she keeps leaving stuff lying all over the girls' room.

Ok, so after the toys, then there was junk - candy wrappers, wads of gum stuck on the back of beds, shreds of paper from journals, rubber bands, paper clips, scissors, markers, pencils, and on and on and on. What on earth???

Then we started moving furniture and discovered the truly gruesome. I found a dried up strawberry with nice dried up mold still stuck to it. It left a nice strawberry stain on the carpet. A dried up carrot. Months-old stinky underwear. Gobs and gobs of hairy dust. Does anyone know if that statistic is actually true? That 85% of household dust is dead skin cells? Ewwww. And boogers. I'm embarrassed to say that my children have indeed wiped boogers on the walls, and do you know what? It's really hard to scrape dried boogers off the wall. And yeah, I wanted to get them off so there wouldn't be little booger-shaped clumps under the new paint. The ballerina carpet has one corner that I believe the cats have used for an alternate litter box - I highly doubt I'll be getting much for that at my yard sale. And when I stand over the vent in my girls' room, I can smell the faint odor of pee wafting up from the innards of the house. . . .I don't even want to know.

How can such sweet little creatures as girls create such disgusting messes? My poor husband is totally disillusioned about little girls. Where are the sweet-as-sugar, pig-tail wearing, innocent-grinning little cherubs he thought he was getting? They turned out to be burping, farting, booger-wiping, stinky-footed creatures.

I'm hoping to do a thorough carpet cleaning after the painting is done. And the paint we chose is Dutch Boy "Refresh", which is supposed to have odor control. Cool huh?


I hope it works.