My younger sister was the slob of my family when growing up. I hate to say it, but she was. She simply didn’t care about where she left her stuff: backpack, shoes, dirty dishes. The house was constantly littered with her things. Over and over my mom would ask her to pick up after herself but my sister never seemed to catch on to the idea of cleaning. One day my mom had finally had enough. Quite frankly I think we all had. So, she came up with an idea that would forever change my sister’s messy habits.
It was a weekend and my sister had left the house in the morning to meet up with a friend. I noticed later that her bedroom door was closed even though she wasn’t home. “Why is Jess’s door closed?” I asked my mom. “You’ll see when she gets home,” she said. Well, when my sister returned home we didn’t “see” anything. We just heard a lot of screaming and loud obscenities. What my mom had done was ingenious for two reasons. It got my sister’s attention and it made her mad. My mom had collected all of my sister’s dirty coffee mugs and dishes that were molding in her room and put them on her pillow. My sister came home to her bed spoiled with spilled old coffee and hard pizza crusts. Gross right? Yes, but it forced my sister to rethink her patterns. She never again wanted dirty dishes on her bed and therefore learned the very important rule of cleaning up after one’s self.
This old funny memory got me thinking about my own two teenagers’ most annoying hangups. Every time my son comes home from school he takes off his socks and throws them around the living room for our dogs to play with. My daughter loves to bake, but doesn’t like to clean up the dishes she dirties, hence leaving behind mixing bowls and spatulas in the sink. As trivial as these things seem, there is a constant chore war that occurs in my house daily. It is a fight to get the yard picked up, the dogs walked, the dishwasher put away. Even though my teens know these are daily chores, things that must get done, they fight me on it. In fact, they fight with each other about who did what yesterday, and who’s day it is to bring the laundry down. Chores, it seems, don’t fit into the average teens schedule. But in my opinion they are a foundation and building block in learning the importance of responsibility.
Like most parents, I want my teens to grasp the idea of picking up after themselves, and respecting the space in our house that we all need to share. This is so important because in a few short years they will be off on their own and will be responsible for their laundry and personal living space. My child will not be the slob of the dorm, or the nightmare piggy roommate. They will be the clean, organized one, I’m hoping. Maybe, maybe not, but here’s to wishful thinking. At least I will be able to reflect back and know that I really did try to help and guide them and that our silly fights about chores really weren’t funny, but a good life lesson.
Now, to both my teens credit, they do keep their rooms clean except the heaps of La Croix cans that make it into the bathroom garbage, not the recycling bin downstairs. So as an ode to my mom and her brilliant Irish ways, I tried the garbage on the bed thing. I literally placed the bathroom garbage can right on top of my son’s pillows. It didn’t go over very well. He was quite mad and absolutely floored that I had the audacity to dirty his bed. But you know what, yesterday when he cleaned his room I noticed that he brought his garbage downstairs, not into the bathroom. It seems he actually learned something. So, thanks to my mom for her old school ways … sometimes we just need to go back to basics.
