Why oh why????

WHY is it that when you go to clean your house - really deep down clean it - you end up making a bigger mess?

Ow. I just rubbed my eyes and obviously still have onion juice on them. Well, as I sit here and cry I'll try to relate my frustrations about the house.

I haven't had my house baby-proofed since well, since I had a baby in the house. Now that Kady is a rather mature 3 1/2 I just have been lax about stuff. Pool chemicals have a comfy home on the floor in front of my washing machine. The heavy, turn of the century, iron that my husband refused to get rid of when we got married EVEN THOUGH we got a really nice new one at a wedding shower that had steam and a plastic cord, not a fabric one (Yeah, it's THAT old) sits in a rolling cart that is somewhat shaky and one wrong move could send it careening onto little toes. We keep a mousetrap set in the pantry floor at all times because I hate the furry little suckers. That thing is just waiting for some chubby little fingers to snap. I could go on, but right now you're looking up the number to DHS so you can turn me in. I'll stop and pray that the fact that I have changed all of this now will redeem me and cause you to rethink that hasty decision to involve social workers in any form.

But, here's the crappy part. I moved my washing machine over and that shaky cart that housed the iron, now sits firmly between the washer and dryer. Then the shelf that held the lightbulbs, detergent, bleach, extra paper towels, etc. I cleaned up and it is now in the toyroom. That left me shelf-less in the utility room. SO I took the yaffa blocks that were in my dining room holding all of the coloring books, crayons, construction paper, play-doh, paint and other artsy craftsy stuff and put them in my utility room to hold stuff. And now, our entire collection of creativity is sitting on my dining room table. Oh I have one whole cabinet that is large enough to house all of the craft crap, but it sits empty. It is now known as the mouse cabinet. Or Mouseville. We can't keep the little suckers out of it. Traps, poison, a rather large mobster named Vito - nothing works. And I just cannot stand the thought of my children coloring in their Barney and Ninja Turtle coloring books that mice have probably just danced upon.

I really need a cabinet of some kind with doors so that I can lock up all of the crayons and such. I need to be able to latch it securely because I don't want to send Cute Baby home so his parents can totally freak out when they change a multi-colored poopy diaper after I forget to tell them that he ate a box of crayons that afternoon. Cabinets with doors cost money. I seem to be out of that. Ya know, we don't have to eat on the dining room table . . . it's high enough that the baby can't get to what's on top. If I put the baby in the highchair I can feed the other kids in the floor . . .

Wait, wait! Put the phone book back down. We really needn't involve the authorities. I promise I won't feed the children in the floor.

But I will bake you cookies if you have a small cabinetish piece of furniture that will fit in my dining room and is really, really, really cheap.