Saturday, January 2, 2016

A Step-by-Step Guide to Exciting Clean Up Magic


(Relevant background info: our two youngest kiddos share a room. It’s the biggest bedroom but our house was built in 1956, when rooms weren’t very big and closets were the size of a phone booth.)

 
1)      Convince self that cleaning up is magical and exciting.

2)      Failing to convince self, look around at the kids’ floor and decide that boring and overwhelming as cleaning it is, it must be done.

3)      Take shelf off wall using drill so that you can…

4)      Move bunk bed so that stuff to the left of the bunk bed is slightly easier to access.

5)      Install shelves between closet and bunk bed. (Pat self on back for reusing shelf supports we already had and shelves that have been in garage for over a year. Put blinders on and do not look around garage at all the stuff there, because this will cause a minor panic, which—although justified—does not help with the bedroom clean up.)

6)      Wonder why you didn’t install shelves in bedroom two + years ago when you moved bunk bed in.

7)      Have allergy attack #5.

8)      Trip on stuff on the floor.

9)      Curse.

10)   Feel slightly better after cursing.

11)   Blow nose for 954th time.

12)   Hang up clothes that have been on top bunk for weeks where a child once slept. (This takes hours.)

13)   Panic over amount of stuff still left to do.

14)   Notice that the Stuff Pile resembles size and complexity of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Wonder whether you need climbing gear, axes and extra oxygen to reach top of it.

15)   Organize books onto shelf. Smile at how tidy the books look, all in harmony, shoulder to shoulder.

16)   Sweep remaining floor stuff (and there is plenty) to one side and determine that it can wait.

17)   Sneeze.

18)   Blow nose.

19)   Panic over stuff to organize.

20)   Sweep.

21)   Repeat steps 17-20 many times.

22)   Vow that once this room gets clean (a relative term), you will consider dealing with messy garage.

23)   Consider whether being kidnapped by aliens is more appealing that dealing with messy garage.

24)   Shake head and lament fact that you did not train the kids to do more cleaning when they were little. Shake head again and remind self that feeding them seemed to take up most of the day and forgive self for dropping the ball on cleaning.

25)   Look for lamp with genie inside so that you can wish for instant clean up.

26)   Google origin of genie in a lamp tale instead of cleaning.

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