I relinquish all control

OK maybe not ALL control.

I have always been a neat and organizational freak. But after three kids, a few calming drugs and a more than a hectic lifestyle I have learned to ease back on it a bit. Although I do still tend to have my more than manic moments. :/ But the lax of my need for this control over the household really just hit me over the past couple of weeks. See. Cat in the Hat has her fathers gene handed down from ancestors long ago mating with the pack rat out sheer horniness and nothing else to lay at the moment. Add to that their lack of organizational skills and you get one big huge dump for a bedroom. Picture, if you can, the old bag lady in the Labyrinth starring the handsomely famous singer/actor David Bowie? Yeah that scary. I often wonder if she will be a poor bag lady or a rich eclectic collector of rare and odd artifacts. But I digress.

I have always in the past took way too much time, energy and sighs nit picking through her piles of drawings, magazine clippings, books, toys (broken and not), jewelry, clothes, shoes, bobbles, stones, trinkets and whatever you may imagine to find at the bottom of a pile that has not been gone through in ages. And, yes, including a few dead somethings that you can no longer recognize. I have tried to instill in her my innate ability to know when to keep the treasure that was just found at the local department stores purse section or to toss the trash that stuck to the sidewalk and took twenty minutes to pick off. I have tried all in vain to offer up boxes, baskets, bags and drawers in hopes that she would use them for something other than another spot to overload with more junk, um, treasures.

Well, we talked, once again, about cleaning out her room, going through and picking out a few (actually more of enough to fill a huge ass box) items to trash or give away and then organizing the rest. Once again. And once again she took, really, way too long of a time to get her room actually to a semi clean state of being. MONTHS. WEEKS. DAYS. OK just days. But still. When she finally got to the point of it being my turn to come in and get her back to organizational bliss I just had a moment of deep anguish, deep despair, the unbridled deep desire to run and run as fast as I could in the other direction. WHAT? ME? Run away from my most deepest and darkest addiction? What has gotten into me?

The only conclusion I have been able to come up with is that I no longer want that kind of control over my daughters life. I have given her a cave of her very own. Separate from the rest of the mountain. She has reached the age of her own definability and she should be allowed to create her space in whatever way makes her feel safe and comfortable and happy in there (Really, whatever it takes to keep her in there, right?). At the grand old age of eight she is coming into her own decorating style and as much as it's going to kill me I will relinquish my control over it all.

All except when it becomes a complete disaster and the floor has disappeared below a mountain of crap, um, treasures.