Creativity and chaos

For the first time since I've been blogging, I'm glad I don't have a digital camera. There is absolutely no chance of anyone seeing my house right now (and for those who live near me, I'll lock the door!).

My son is in the midst of a...um...creative project that has taken much longer than I thought when he started it.

It's not one of those quick craft ideas, or getting out the scrapbook supplies for an afternoon...we're talking major time invested here. My family room and dining area look like Hobby Lobby blew up and part of it landed in these two rooms.

I'm actually quite happy about this turn of events for he's creating a landscape for his own "board game". I could only call it Axis and Allies on steroids. Some of you may know the game of which I'm speaking but part of the "fun" is in the building of your own terrain. He has spent over a week with foam board scraps everywhere and now the glue will meet the so called road as he does the "fun stuff" with the final designs.

It's bringing back a sense of deja vu from the years his sister brought home the same materials from design classes at the University, only she was building...buildings. How fondly I remember the all nighters as she was finishing a major project...I expect she doesn't remember them with quite so much fondness. There was one major difference now, there is no little brother that one has to lock out of one's room with the threat of major bodily harm if he came near the semester project!

Long term creative projects have always brought about that division within me of my need to create vs. my need for a clutter free environment. When I lived in a large house, I could keep the main living areas clutter free and find a place to quilt or craft where a door could shut and keep the rest of the world out of my creative kingdom.

My son and his friends (the twins who graduate from high school this week) could set up entire Playmobile worlds in the finished half of our basement and leave them up for months at a time. It was a perfect world where creativity and a clean house could survive under one roof.

Well...we do not have that option in a smaller house. So what side of my personality wins? It has to be the part of me who gets thrilled when I watch my family in the midst of a creation of their own. I don't want their memories to be of a mom who demands a clean house all the time.

Although I hope my home is usually creative and clutter free! Instead I know there will be weeks at a time when I'm wiping glue off the coffee table and watching where I walk because there is a stack of "cut out pieces" left in the middle of the floor ready to be finished when someone arrives home from work.

Chaos that eventually becomes a thing of beauty.