Working hard to reach status quo

I stepped on no less than 16 toys walking from my family room to the kitchen today.   Looking over the toy trail, I am amazed by the amount of chaos(most of it in shades of pink) three small children can create. I admire their curiosity, their tenacity and their genuine desire to learn but, oh, the mess! Stifling the desire to run around screaming like a banshee,  I had to take a deep breath.  What's really important here?  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE a clean house, but how can the kids fully enjoy themselves if they worry about being neat? 

I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Every night my husband and I put the kids to bed, come downstairs and pick up the mess that was created by my family all day.  It doesn't get better than clean, though.  How is it that we work so hard only to end up just achieving status quo?  Some nights, I feel insane to keep trying.

But then I looked into our toy closet and realized that there was no way the kids could put any thing away.  Nothing had a home any more.  I don't know about you, but normally I would just close the curtains on the toy closet, sit down and have a glass of wine.  If you can't see it, it doesn't actually exist, right?  Not this time.  In the spirit of my New Year's resolution, I am reprioritizing my to do list and setting out to reorganize our toy closet.  I'll post the finished product picture next week.  Wish me luck!