Cleaning Your Child’s Room
The door was just barely able to be opened, the closet was so crammed with “stuff” that it was spilling out on the floor. The dresser drawers were all partially pulled out and clothes were scattered all over the floor. Her comforter was almost completely laying on the floor, held onto the bed only by another enormous pile of “stuff”.
I let out a sigh of defeat before I even began…..this was going to take a while.
I started with the closet, throwing away papers and putting toys in the toy box. As with any project of this magnitude, at some point you make a bigger mess than what you had when you started, which was exactly what happened to me. Soon the door was blocked with a pile of stuff and there was no way for anyone to enter, likewise, there was no way for me to escape.
It was about at that point that I heard my daughter ask her daddy on the other side of the door “Why is my bedroom door shut?” Her dad, who was trying to make her feel guilty for letting her room get so messy responded, “Because you mom is in there cleaning up your mess.”
Even with the door shut I could see the looks on both of their faces. My husband looking down at his little daughter pretending to be stern, and her looking up at him batting her eyelashes. She responded to him with only one word “Why?” “Because it’s a mess, that’s why, you should be in there helping her.”
NO!!!!!
As any mother knows, the only effective way to clean a small child’s room is to do it when they aren’t in there. It’s usually best to do it while they are at grandma’s or when they are outside playing. Under no circumstance do you want them HELPING!
I sat there in the middle of the pile of stuff that I had built up around me and shook my head. As I sat there I heard my daughter’s voice again through the door. “Mommy?” she asked. “Yes?” I answered. “You aren’t throwing away any of my important stuff are you?” “What important stuff are you talking about?” “The important stuff that’s in my closet, and under my bed, and in the baby bed, and in the box under the dresser, and beside the dresser.
The important stuff that you think is making my room all a mess.” “No dear, I won’t throw away the important stuff, I’m just going to straighten things up a little in here so you can find the important stuff.” “But if you straighten it up, mommy, I won’t know where all of my important stuff is.” “I’ll show you where it is.” “Mommy? Did you ever think that my room is a mess because it isn’t big enough for all of my important stuff?” “Honey, Texas isn’t big enough for all of your important stuff.”
After that conversation with my daughter I realized the all of the stuff I thought was just junk cluttering up her room was all stuff that she considered ‘important stuff’. A lot the same way that some of the papers and mementoes of mine may seem worthless to someone else.
These things (most of which would classify as trash, and a lot of which did get thrown away when she wasn’t looking) were all her treasurers. How can you argue with that?
It’s something worth thinking about.
