Cleaning up after the packrat

Pfew! The room clean-up is done, or at least phase one. That phase was a two-day event of taking everything out of my son's room, every piece of torn paper, every ripped-up plastic bag, every destroyed toy car, every bit of the 5,000-piece grocery store set he got for Christmas a couple of years ago, every key, every old sock that he pretends is fish for his cooking games, every receipt in his receipt collection, every last thing. That was yesterday. Today was sorting through it and putting almost everything back, because even if it looks like trash to you and it looks like trash to me, it looks like a compulsively necessary treasure to the boy. I don't even fight. If it's put away and I don't have to look at it, it can stay. The room is reassembled now, in sightlier fashion, but that doesn't count the huge amount of junk on top of the unused bunkbed, and the piles of junk down by the garage where he enjoys packing up the car with clutter and unpacking it repeatedly. Those two spots are a job for another day. Or month. Or maybe, year. I'm beat.