How Ball Wins at Poker

     I sent all the kids upstairs to clean up their bedrooms. They of course were pissed thrilled to have this opportunity!  During this time, I also do chores and as I'm cleaning, I look into each kids' room.  If that child is working, I will dive in and help out because I'm cool like that.

     Unexpectedly, 4 year old Ball is usually the best.  She loves having a clean floor and takes pride in her work.  She often hits me up for multiple compliments on a job well done.  However, on this particular day, she was not going for it.  She told me that she refused to clean her room unless I helped her.  Let me translate this for you: she would willingly lay on the floor doing nothing while I picked up everything.

     Neither of us was subscribing to the other's plan.  I threw down the gauntlet.  I told her I was leaving and she needed to get to work or the next time she saw me, I would have a garbage bag and the stuff on the floor would go in it.  (I know, I'm a hard ass.)  Five minutes later Ball was downstairs whining that she really needed my help.  I warned her again to go upstairs and get to work.

     Once the dishes were in the dishwasher, I walked upstairs with my garbage bag.  Ball was laying on the floor and not one thing had been picked up.  She saw my garbage bag and didn't care.  I picked up every item and placed it in my bag letting her know it was gone.  (Gone means in my closet for a really long time because I can't handle throwing anything away.)  There was not even a whimper from her.  When my bag was full and her floor was clean she looked at me and said "Thanks for cleaning my room Momma."

What do you do when you have a parenting fail?

Real Housework

     I had big plans for Spring Break; two days with nothing but fun on the agenda.  That's right, Spring Cleaning.  It was time for my kids to learn about real housework.  Blondie has had life pretty easy, Dude is perfectly capable of handling everything on my  list, and it's never too young for Ball to learn some valuable life skills.

     Surprisingly, my plan was met with little resistance and mild enthusiasm.  Here is my kids' spin on cleaning.  Maybe you can use these selling points on your own minions, er I mean children.

     Blondie thinks cleaning sucks and using cleaning products is hazardous to your health.  In spite of her wonderfully positive attitude, at the end of two days she did everything that was asked of her and even begrudgingly admitted that it was nice to be able to see her bedroom floor and find books on her bookshelves.
    
     Ball loves vacuuming.  She told me this about five times while ramming the vacuum into her bedroom furniture.  She also loves washing walls.  More accurately, she loves soaking her arms in the warm soapy (kinda dirty) water and working just long enough to justify putting her rag, (arms) back in the water.  Ball took great pride in her work and added her smile to all her assigned tasks.

Ball's method for washing walls

     Dude likened the Windex bottle to a gun and volunteered to clean every window and mirror in my house.   He also thinks the long plastic tube on the vacuum cleaner with the dust attachment is like a ninja spear and he ferociously attacked all our dust bunnies.

     Spring Cleaning was finished Thursday.  Saturday at dinner Dude pulled me away from the table to show me something very important!  He lead me to our banister and pointed to it; a minuscule amount of dust.  We could only go back to the table after I promised to tackle this evil enemy later.

     In all  of this I was trying to teach my kids important lessons.  Meanwhile I probably learned the most valuable one: be careful when you teach a child with obsessive tendencies about cleaning.  For Dude I either equipped him with wonderful tools or set him up for complete mental breakdown.  Only time will tell.

The Carpet is Visable

     Saturday on Facebook my status read: "Marian is not coming out of the office until a respectable amount of the carpet is visible."  This may have seemed like hyperbole, but our office was a complete disaster.  (A tornado coming through probably would have helped matters.)  And as much as I would love to blame someone else, it was all my fault.

     I know in a lot of houses mail might get left on a counter for a few days, or the dining room table might get piled up with stuff that needs to be taken care of soon, but in my house there was an entire room devoted to "I'll get to it later".  The most unfortunate part was; that entire room is Hub's home office where he actually tries to work sometimes.  That wonderful man kept his complaining to a minimum (he deserves a medal).

     Now I have some great mom friends.  We swap stories about the fun and not so fun aspects of raising our kids.  We complain about getting the kids to school, preparing dinner, and housework.  We curse housework.  If not for housework, our lives would be almost perfect. 

     Usually when conversing with my friends at some point I will confess that my house is messier than most.  Being the understanding and gracious friends that they are, this confession is usually met with statments along the lines of:

"I'm sure it can't be that bad."  (I have photographic evidence to the contrary.)

"I can't even imagine how busy you are with 3 kids!"  (My kids are only signed up for 2 activities and I am terrible at showing up to those on a regular basis.)

"I can barely keep my house clean with my kids, I can't even imagine having to deal with all 3 kids." (most of my friends stopped at 2)

When these lines are said to me I smile and nod and happily move onto the next topic of conversation. 

     My friend's comments leave me wishing that any of those was the real reason that an entire room in my house turned into my dumping ground.  Instead the real culprits are laziness, procrastination, and an amazing ability to turn a blind eye.  Whenever stuff comes into my house it sits on my kitchen counter (lazy).  When it is time to clean my kitchen counter everything gets dumped in a pile on the office floor to be dealt with later (procrastination).  These piles grow, spilling out of baskets onto the floor making it difficult to even walk in the room.  The next time my kitchen counter needs cleaning I open the office door, brace myself, dump the new pile on top of the old, and run away (turning a blind eye).  And so it goes until:

(I am lucky my husband still lives with me after I did this to his office.)

         

     Suddenly, I realized that when I go back to school I am going to need this office too.  Uh oh!  The office has been in this state for so long that I am fairly certain I could have waited until June to remedy the problem.  I could have procrastinated - I'm really good at that.  But instead I decided to not be totally selfish and give my sweet, tolerant husband some time to himself in a nice, relaxing office - at least until I come in and take over with all my school books and homework.

           

Thanks for living with me Michael!