Survival of the Fittest

I just spent 30 minutes cleaning Amara's room, mostly sorting out all the random stuff and tossing papers and junk, putting away puzzle pieces, etc. I realized that I'm in a sort of evolutionary arms race here. I don't know if that's a familiar term to the general public, or just one I've picked up while studying science. When I first got married, my cleaning skills were meager. I knew how to scrub a toilet, yes, but I had no system in place to get everything done, etc. Well, over the years, I've learned more attention to detail, and gotten a pretty good routine down that will help me keep things in order. Here's where my competitive co-evolvers come in: Amara. First one baby, who makes cleaning harder simply by occupying appendages used for cleaning. As child ages, mom learns to be more resourceful and can clean up while holding child, or while child sleeps. Then, child becomes mobile and capable of making bigger messes. Yikes! Mom steps up the cleaning again, vacuums all the time, hides chokables, scrubs floor (since child has been known to lick food off of it...). Just as things are getting easier, mom is expecting another baby and is too sick to keep up the routine. New baby restarts the cycle, now with a messy toddler in tow who continues to increase her mess-making ability and still has very meager cleaning skills of her own. I guess I thwart my own evolution by increasing my competitors' numbers.

Seriously, how do you keep up? Any tips? The whole: Pick up one thing before you get out another is just not practical at this stage. If Amara got out a box of blocks, then moved on to a puzzle, etc that would work. But its a few blocks, 2 puzzle pieces, and 1000 scraps of paper are all being used simultaneously for some unknown purpose. I go in her room this morning, and all around her "mini table" is pure craziness. Stickers, crayons, a coloring book, foam shapes, marker lids, scissors, ALL the drawing/coloring supplies strewn about the table. It seems pretty reasonable that she would be using them all, but I can hardly get this girl to put the lids back on her markers, much less put the markers and other supplies back into their boxes..