Creativity = Clutter

So February is over and you know what? Believe it or not I’m a wee bit glad I can plug my kids into electronics occasionally. Our non-electronic-entertainment month was as always, an eye opener. Every year we do it we learn something new. This year, yes the kids benefited from many things like ah, more frequent human interaction (both harmonious and non-harmonious), more physical exercise time (wrestling with siblings, running, playing tag), Etc. But the biggest breakthrough this last month was creativity.

I’ve concluded one thing about creativity. It equates with clutter.

People have told me that I’m very creative. However my creativity is also a clutter problem for me. And guess what my kids have inherited this creative gene from me.

Over mid-winter break I came home from an afternoon of classes with my O.D.D. child and found that Abner and T-rev in my absence had made a quick trip to a local home improvement store to buy a couple large sheets of foam board. I headed into our home-school /library room and found our lesson table covered with a nightmare clutter filled landscape looking like a miniature war zone.

Here's T-rev working on his mini Coliseum.

The floor didn’t fare much better and was covered with thousands of static cling foam kernels that had been shaved off from the main project. Even though my eyes were assaulted with the mess I couldn’t help but be impressed with their imagination.

Abner explained that they were making a movie with little miniature pieces, and they only had a few measly days to complete it because they wanted to enter it in a contest. Wow, I was impressed that they were doing this on their own and I didn’t have to make lists of different things that they could do to keep themselves from being bored. Since it was a school break I allowed for mess. They locked themselves off from the rest of the family for probably a good three days and then they were done. I never saw the finished project until they posted it on U-tube. Abner was having trouble with his email so he used someone else’s address but they got it on within minutes of the deadline. I didn’t think too much of it until last night. My husband and I were upstairs and all of the sudden the house started vibrating and there were some strange noises coming from downstairs. I guess they were strange to me because Abner isn’t too vocal with his excitement normally. This time was the exception.

Yeah, we are proud parents. T-rev and Abner made a mini-movie and out of over 30 entries they won. Wa-hoo. Unfortunately winning means a prize. $500 dollars worth of mini-plastic figurines and accessories. Oh, thrill more clutter. I can always hope they might want to turn around and sell the stuff on E-bay, if not then we will have to negotiate the clutter rule of more-out-than-in and see what they are willing to get rid of before they acquire their award haul.