The Second-to-Last Resort of a Desperate Mommy

Things keep disappearing around my house. I'm not talking about the myriad school projects and papers that somehow find their way into the recycling bin (no, not all of them, just the half-assed jobs), but rather everything else. The kiddo's toys, some of her birthday money, hair clips and elastics...broken hardware, papers, cat toys...socks, more socks. The cat toys, well, sure, the cat has batted them around and they have ended up under the stove--well, most of them. I caught the kiddo playing with one of the cat's toys last week. She wasn't chewing on it, thank goodness, but--why, just please tell me why...And I'm sure that the cat is responsible for some of the clips and elastics entering our own version of the Bermuda Triangle. How do I explain the rest? I can't!

At this point, I have lost count of what is missing and where it might be. I have come to the conclusion that there is just too much stuff in my house. This is a conclusion that I have come to before, and I thought the matter had been resolved by Operation Clutter Reduction Action Plan--aka Operation CRAP. However, the problem seems to be with the kiddo's crap junk stuff. Toys, parts of toys, parts of parts of toys...parts of things that may or may not be from toys...you get the picture. My dilemma is that the toys in question are not slated to be tossed. It's just that there are too darn many of them. So, half of the kiddo's toys were relocated to the storage room--a room that she is barred from. They will be back in rotation at a later date. You know what the kicker, is, though? Compared with some of the kiddo's friends, she doesn't have that many toys. Of course, many of her friends have siblings, so their toys and whatnot get jumbled together, but still, I though that the kiddo's amount was paltry compared to that of some of her peers. In any case, the amount was too big for my sanity. While some toys may still find their way to Goodwill, most of them will remain. Remain out of sight, out of mind, that is, until it's their turn upstairs again.

The incident that motivated this drastic action was the loss of a game piece. Yes, one measly game piece. In a true Pinterest triumph, I designed my own outdoor tic tac toe board, bullied hubby into cutting tiles for me, found stones, painted them, drew X's and O's, and put a sparkly top coat on them. I put them out for the first time today before we had kids over for a play date, and within one freakin' hour, one of the O's was missing. Petty, I know, but it didn't even last an hour. With all of my Pinterest failures, I was pretty proud of this. There are actually enough pieces; the one that went awol was the extra O. That is not the point. The point is that it happened within ONE HOUR. That and the fact that the kiddo has so much stuff that it could have gotten mixed in with that we won't find it until she goes to college. So, my theory is: less stuff-->less stuff strewn about and forgotten-->less clutter-->more organization-->fewer lost and missing items. OK, so that probably won't happen. But at least I can have some of my sanity back? Maybe?