seige of leningrad?

i spent the better part of my morning cleaning sabin's room and it was such hard work that i have to share the "after" pictures here (i didn't have the heart to take "before" pix) if only to remember that it was once clean, since i doubt it will stay that way for long. it's not a huge room, but it is a very pink room, as you can see. still, she accumulated an astonishing amount of papers (most of them with drawings of varying quality on them) and other junk that took me nearly three hours to sort through and straighten up.

i felt motivated to do this because the rest of the house is clean and sparkly thanks to the wonderful sylvia, who comes and takes care of that every friday. it continues to astonish me how much energy it gives me that i have someone come to clean. if i'd known that, i'd totally have arranged for it years ago.

in amongst all of the candy wrappers and small stashes of leftover saturday candy, i found a lot of bowls and cups that i'd forgotten we even had. i also loaded up a big bag of old stuffed toys to take to the good will for some other lucky child. she's still got plenty, as you can see (the two giant bears from ikea--one of which once belonged to her big sister).

i had a lot of time to think about what causes her to be such a pack rat. she wants to save every single scrap of paper she's ever made a scribble on. it was so bad before i cleaned that the little window seat above was completely covered in papers and toys and she couldn't even use it. it's such a relief to have it tidied up now and i'm sure that she'll feel much better when she sees it too.

i found all kinds of caches of cookies and rice cakes and even an old petrified apple tart from a batch that i made last summer sometime. it's madness. was the child in the seige of leningrad in her last life and she feels driven to hoard food in her room? or is she just forgetful?

i think it's that she really loves her room and likes to spend time there and that means taking snacks up (which i'm going to issue a decree against) while she plays with lego or plays on her computer. and the past few days, i'm so proud of her, she's taken to writing stories in Pages, her word processing program. she even used photobooth to take a picture of a postcard and dropped that into her document. she has an innate ability with the computer that is breathtaking.

i'm just glad it's tidy for now. but i won't hold my breath for how long it lasts, but it seems a bit of spring cleaning feels quite good.