I freely admit I am not much of a housekeeper. I would like to keep a clean house, well that’s not true. I want to live in a tidy and clean house where everything is put away and no colonies of dust bunnies are allowed to thrive. It just seems other things get in the way of my making it that way. Like writing this blog, doing homework for my class, figuring out what activities to put my kids in, watching TV, contemplating paint choices for our family room (we’re about to test colour #4) and well pretty much anything else I can think of.
Quite apart from my own slob-like tendancies, at some point Husband and I became overwhelmed by the mess our kids make. We try to get them to tidy up. Sometimes. We allow them to play in the basement rec room and we don’t worry about the mess too much thinking this will allow us to keep the rest of the house tidier.
S for her part likes to change clothes. A lot. Her clothes litter the house. We try to enforce a rule that she can change her clothes but she has to put the other ones away, but it does feel like we are facing a force bigger than us. J likes to draw, write, colour. Markers and scraps of paper are everywhere. Add to this J and S like to play house or babies and there are blankets, spoons, baby toys in, it seems, every room of the house.
Against this back drop, the great clean-up of 2008 began. I figured I would start in the family room/kitchen where we do most of our living. As I started to sort through the toys in the family room (keep/give away/ throw away) I hear an excited voice, “My robot, I’ve been looking for this!!”.
I respond, “J, it has only one leg and no head. And it’s from McDonald’s. I think we can throw it away.”
Before I can secure an answer I hear “Mommy, my widow bear, I miss him!”.
“Oh S, that little bear is kind of scruffy, don’t you think? I think he spent the winter outside on the deck. And I think a raccoon tried to eat him.”
“Mommy, where did you find this?” J asks excitedly.
“Umm, what is it?” I ask as I examine unidentifiable piece of plastic. J responds “I can’t remember, but I haven’t seen it in a long long time!!”
My throw away/give away piles are dwindling and the family room looks worse than where I started.
I turn in another direction. “J, do you think you could clean up your things behind the chaise lounge?”
“My lab?”. It consists of jar of pencils, an old stuffed bear, a calculator, an old briefcase-like purse of mine (from which he is now inseparable with and what we now call his ‘man purse’) some paper and a bowl of stale crackers.
“Yes, we need to tidy up.” I am calm, pleasant and hopefully firm.
“But, I need a lab! I am a scientist.”
“Can you make the lab in your room?” I ask hopefully.
“No, that is my old house. And my new house is in the den”.
I seize an opportunity. “Yes, about the den, we can hardly walk in there. We need to tidy that up too”. All the dining room chairs, every cushion that is not nailed down and a bucket-load of other crap is assembled to make the new house.
“BUT MOMMY, WHERE WILL QUACK AND QUACKY LIVE???”.
“How about beside the stairs? And you could put your lab there too.” I’m beginning to realize the kids have more square footage than we do.
“That is my art and book museum. You can’t have a lab there. And I need a house because that’s where I live and I need a lab because that is where I go to work”.
Protracted negotiations begin as to where the house could be. Things get complicated because S wants a house too and the two of them want to be neighbours. We finally settle on the 2 of them being roommates in the IKEA castle which we wedge into a corner of the family room. J reluctantly agrees to have his lab merge with his museum.
A day of negotiations and I still have a lot of cleaning to do.
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