Anatomy of a Playroom Disaster

How a mess became mayhem and why, sometimes, you just need to do the damn thing.

Tradwife Tutor will return next week. I promised a how-to-make-sourdough starter tutorial, not realizing I will need to walk you through at least the first week, and maybe even make a nifty calendar printable, because that’s the kind of blog this is now. Since sourdough is the gateway drug to conspiracy theories homemaking success, we may as well do it right, even if I actually don’t like sourdough bread.

(That’s not required to have a starter, though. I keep it for the waffles, cinnamon rolls, and pizza dough).

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Two weeks ago, I shocked and awed the Internet with a single before-and-after shot of my upstairs playroom, which went from an episode of TLC’s Hoarders to, well, maybe it doesn’t quite qualify for Pinterest, but something that you can walk around in without sustaining a major injury.

The number one question I got, though, was “how did it get this way?” and while the answer is pretty complicated, once you pare away the excuses, the reason really is: I just didn’t care.

That’s a rough way to put it, for sure. There are a lot of reasons I didn’t care, including one major one — a deep depression — but it’s hard to plant fault on others who maybe didn’t follow directions, or refused to enforce the rules, or lack the capacity for executive function, or, in a particularly egregious example, did not seem to notice when preschoolers were conducting physics experiments instead of taking a nap, dropping MegaBlocks from a second story window.

For those who might not already know my story, you can find it here and here. Suffice it to say, I almost died, decided that it would be fine to return both to domestic duties and actual work within days, and suffered from a pretty menacing case of post-traumatic stress disorder. And nearly 18 months of therapy later, I’m still working it out, because as humans — and often as women — we just think everything is straightforward, and if we just try harder we can will life back to normal.

The weird part about trauma and depression is that you don’t always know you’re going through it when you’re going through it. With PTSD, it wasn’t just an endless string of nightmares and flashbacks, it was more like a catatonic state, watching life sort of float by on a screen. But instead of being passive about the progression of time, I was angry about it. Life had no right to go on while I wasn’t participating — and, to be sure, I wasn’t. But kids had no right to grow up. Work had no right to make demands. In fact, no one had any right to make demands while I still hadn’t processed that I’d probably come within hours of departing this earthly life.

About 18ish months ago, I started therapy. I processed out a lot: the terror, the sorrow, the guilt, the trauma, and a lot of the resentment. I couldn’t, however, shelve the inaction. I got more accepting of life going on, took on more meaningful employment, got my hands dirty in the garden, all of which made me less angry at the progression of the world around me, but I still just wasn’t participating in it.

All this is to say, somethings in life are a choice. We’ve lost sight of that a little bit in our therapized world, but you’re not really healing if you’re not coming to terms with where you fit in, you’re just engaging with foreward momentum, and when things hit a bump — and they always will — it puts the decision-making involved in returning to real life into stark contrast.

Around that same time, I did a first pass at the playroom, which we never really organized when we moved in. It was fine and my kids were still small enough to be only tangentially aware of toys somewhere else besides the living room, but the purpose was to, at least, give them someplace to play that wasn’t always on display through a picture window — or a home for toys that migrated downstairs. Which is all they did.

And then I shut the door and never touched it again.

The tough part about not participating in life is that no one else can see you’re on injured reserve, so they just live their lives without really wondering about it. That playroom got used, at least two hours a day, three days a week during an enforced “quiet time,” and then every day during the summer. By three kids, none of whom were on the verge of developing executive function. Or, to be fair, situational awareness of any kind.

Now, here’s problem number two: at some point, I could tell we were no longer organized in the playroom. I mean, how could you miss it, really? First, the little tent collapsed. Then the net did, sending a cascade of stuffed animals across the floor. At some point, there was a plastic food fight. Once the kids reached some sort of chaos Event Horizon, it became a free-for-all. Books came off the bookshelf. Arts and crafts materials were used with aplomb. Someone made a mural with purple paint!

I half-heartedly tried to address the issue with our babysitter. She took the instruction to heart and organized a different room. Actually, I’m not sure she organized it so much as removed all clothing with a licensed character on it, and shoved it into a white plastic bag, and put that white plastic bag at the back of a closet, perfectly located for when a kid finally realized their Pokemon wardrobe was missing from service.

I tried again, asking for help with the playroom. She then conveniently borrowed the playroom’s plastic organizer bins to put pajamas in and rearranged the bedrooms.

I suppose I could have tired to clean it myself, but no.

If you’re wondering what was happening during that two-plus hours per day, the kids were supposed to be napping. And to the babysitter’s credit, she enforced it. She deserved it! Clearly, these kids were just one napless day away from invading Russia. And it wasn’t totally obvious that they were spending their “quiet playtime” wreaking havoc. She often ate lunch with her back to the window so there’s no way she could have known they were dropping Mega-Blocks out of the second floor window.

I mean, I didn’t know they were until I pulled into the driveway into a pink plastic rain shower. Eventually I asked them about the pile of Mega-Blocks in the alley between houses and they happily showed me how they’d been testing out the theory of gravity. They also let me know they’d decided against dropping the cat. Which I’m sure the cat appreciated.

It was at that point I realized we might have a problem. We have three kids, all of whom have tested into the highest standard deviation of IQ. It was only a matter of time before they moved from harmless (if not horrifyingly dangerous) physics experiments to building some sort of weapon of mass destruction.

The kids soon went back to school, eventually, and the babysitter, who was quite wonderful, playroom antics aside, moved on to full-time gainful employment. And I stared at the playroom. I scoured Pinterest for organizational ideas. I bought more plastic bins. I put the books back on the bookshelf, and pawed through the stuffed animals.

I started saying things like, “I’m going to organize the playroom!” Every weekend. I’m going to organize the playroom! Every Monday: I’m going to organize the playroom! It felt a little like, “well, I just need to make it to the end of this week and things will slow down.” They never slow down. I started shutting the door.

Then, one day, I just did it. I took the first step.

I can’t say if I just got far enough in therapy that I’d clear the more difficult hurdles, or whether I was just sick of feeling like there was always something to be done, hanging over my head. The Playroom of Damocles, if you will. I can’t speak to a specific turning point, but I thought that maybe if I did a little, I could do more.

So I picked up the floor.

And then the next day, I swept everything into a pile.

I put the tent and the net back up.

I sorted out the extra stuffies and put the ones we play with in the net.

I cleared one part of the floor.

And then I cleared the next part of the floor.

I never tried to pressure myself or do more than I could handle. I didn’t cry when I left the door open at night, knowing I wasn’t closed to being finished. I took one hour, then two hours. I just did the next thing.

It wasn’t easier than I thought it was going to be. It didn’t take less time than I feared. It’s still a work in progress. But I can find things, and kids can play, and they know where things go. And the toys are gone from the living room. And the toys go back where they belong when the tea party or the Lego session or the reading time-out is over.

And if anyone has any ideas about how to organize dolls, I’m all ears.

In the days after my ectopic pregnancy and subsequent emergency surgery, I felt such a push to go back to everything all at once. I felt like, unless it was perfect, it wasn’t worth doing. My kids deserved better than a messy house and takeout food. My work needed me back even if I wasn’t ready. There was this intense pressure to pretend that everything was okay. And in the end, I think that hurt me more than the surgery. Pain, I can deal with. Sorrow and loss are tangible. The difference between expectation and reality is much easier to ignore and much harder to mourn.

In the end, I had to be okay with two things: one, it was never going to be perfect, but it could be better. And two, its okay to admit that not everything is okay, and that life is a work in progress, just like the playroom. Just like my life. Just like my kids. Just like my writing. Just like this blog. It’s actually fine that nothing is finished. I’m not ready for it to be finished anyway.

When I decided to go back to writing, it took admitting that it might not always be good to put me back in the right frame of mind. I’d avoided this Substack, I’d avoided large-scale writing projects, and even writing as a profession because of the internal pressure to have it come out perfect immediately. It also took looking back and realizing that the things that have been most successful in my life have never been perfect right away. My first blog wasn’t perfect. My journey to motherhood wasn’t perfect. My career never followed that perfect path. But looking back, I couldn’t have, in any way, predicted the end of any of those three stories, let alone the first time I set pen to paper.

I say this, but I’m still a perfectionist. I still want to be a better writer and editor. I still want to learn how to do audio and video. And I think the kids are still working on that gravity experiment.