So am I a bad Mommy or what?

Now I know that this isn't even nearly the worst of the things I could do to make me a bad Mommy. But that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty anyway.

I simply cannot handle the disorganized stacks of papers in my house. Not just the 'necessary' ones like notes home from school, permission slips, bills (oh yes, those pesky things!), insurance forms, and whatnot. Or even the junk mail that gets tossed into the garbage as soon as it leaves my hands. No, it's the school papers, flyers, drawings, colored pages and everything else that falls into the "don't need to deal with it right now, but can't immediately throw it away either" category.

Do you have one of those?

I do try to keep as many of their school papers as I can. I have  a set of plastic drawers in the kitchen (which I would like to replace with something a bit more attractive at some point, but for now, well it works) where I keep the graded homework, spelling tests, art projects and other things that the girls are beginning to bring home from school that I will go through and sort once I can't squeeze anything else into the drawer.

And as for the rest? I'm ashamed to admit that I generally wait a few days until they've forgotten about it (and brought home 25 other things since) and throw much of it away. Because as cute as Abby's drawings of people and kitties are, I don't really see the need to keep all 3,432 of them. And as well as Hannah writes her letters nowadays, having 434 copies of the alphabet in crooked, wiggly, slanting letters is probably a bit much.

Ok, now I do have to defend myself a bit here - I try to keep anything where they're doing, writing or drawing something new. Or where they've made an extra special effort. But when they're bringing home 2 to 3 partly colored My Little Pony coloring book pages from daycare every day, or just filling up space on the paper with scribbles or one. letter. per. sheet...

I just can't deal with the clutter.

So does that make me a bad Mommy? I certainly felt like it on the few occasions where one of the girls noticed something I'd tossed in the trash and asked me why I threw it away - until I learned to bury their papers underneath the junk mail and empty cereal boxes...  :)  Hopefully the girls will be able to forgive me in 20 years when they ask where all of their old coloring pages are at and why I didn't keep every single scrap of paper they brought into the house!