Putting Them To Work

Why, oh why must movers insist on sticking an orange, yellow, or blue stamp-sized sticker to EVERY piece of furniture they move? I do realize there is a purpose, but surely the moving industry can come up with something better than that? Some way of organizing and keeping track of things that does not involve stickers that may or may not want to come off in the end?

For those of you who do not list "moving" as one of your regular activities, perhaps you have no idea what I am talking about. I'll tell you: every item that a mover moves gets a sticker with a number. Every box, every piece of furniture, every vacuum, broom, bike, scooter, stroller, rug... anything that they pick up and put in the truck. They don't take them off when unloading either.

Now since I have not always been the amazingly tidy and organized person I am today (haha), I actually have more than one sticker on some pieces of furniture - from other moves! How terrible is that!?

Well, no sticker is going to live long in this house! I have decided to no longer be the kind of person who has moving stickers stuck to everything or anything! I am putting the troops to work! I made heavy-duty sheets of paper with squares all over them (much like a sticker or chore chart) one for each boy. Soon, I will let them loose to fill up their papers! I have promised a penny for every sticker they find.

This sort of reminds me of the time my dad promised my sister and me a penny for every cigarette butt we picked up one time. We jumped on that, thinking we'd make a killing (we were young enough to actually think we'd make a killing) but after spending hours picking them up (nasty), we then had to re-count them! Imagine two little girls with bags of cigarette butts, counting them one by one...

Fortunately, we will be dealing with stickers here, not dirty, smelly garbage! I just hope the stickers come off easily, or I will have to run around even more than they do, trying to respond to all the "Help, mom! I can't get this one! This one is stuck! I ripped this one! Ben is trying to steal mine!"