Thursday, January 28, 2010

How's that for motivation?


The boys share a room and Audrey bunks alone. The boys live like trolls and they treat their room like the underside of a bridge. Yuck. This week I got fed up with shutting their bedroom door and tiptoeing by so as not to unleash the clothing avalanche that could potentially happen in there. I decided to wade in there and clean it up while they were at school.

After leaving clear written instructions on what to do with my remains should something untoward happen to me in there, I dove in. Suffice it to say that under the piles of mingled clean clothes and skid-marked underpants, the BO scented sweaters, enough Lego bricks to build and mess up another bedroom and video game cartridges, there was a dust bunny infested hardwood floor. I threw out a lot of stuff that I thought was junk and didn't care whether or not they thought the same. I also donated a ton of too-small clothes that they still insisted on wearing. My soul felt lighter after those 2 hours were done, let me tell you.

So I regaled the family over dinner about this tale of perilous derring-do in the Hoarder's dream room and told Audrey her room was next. When dinner was done, she quickly excused herself and I didn't hear from her until she called me to her room.

Holy crap, she'd cleaned it up herself. Every stitch of clothing folded, every stuffed toy lined up, every book back on the shelf. Why? Because she didn't want me plowing through her stuff, donating and throwing away stuff willy-nilly. She's also probably (and rightly so) worried about one of her many diaries and journals "accidentally" falling open during a particularly vigorous dusting session and me oh, so slowly shutting and replacing it.

But that's neither here nor there. She cleaned up her room on her own without me asking begging. It's like a 2 for 1 and all I had to do was spend a couple hours neck deep in her brothers' filth. Score.

kxx

1 comment:

Angie said...

that book cover makes me feel weeeiiirrdd!!!