July 18, 2011

How To Confuse Your Children Without Really Trying

Today we started a new cleaning method.

It’s been highly confusing to my children because it involves no sorting whatsoever.

This is a dilemma, because my children sometimes like to take 7 and a half hours to “clean up” their bedroom.

But THEN, today, I decided that I just don’t care anymore.

I don’t care which toy goes where, I don’t care what belongs to who…. I only care about whether or not I am going to step on said toy, and whether or not it will hurt ME when I do.

So today, I purchased great, big, sturdy storage bucket things (Is it a tote? A bucket? A bin? A box? I just don’t care) and have placed them on each floor of my house.

At dinner, I told the kids that the buckets are not to move floors. There are not “girl” or “boy” buckets. They are not “car” or “doll” or “book” buckets. I told them that sometimes their buckets would have girl AND boy toys in them, and that IT WOULD ALL BE OKAY.

Of course, my children, having lived with me for their entire lives, looked at me in horror and said, “But what if it’s a upstairs toy? Or a library book? OR A BALL?”

And I repeated that I. Don’t. Care.

I just want, to not step, on a tiny pokey toy, going up the stairs, with my full weight, in the middle of the night.