Clean this Room!!!

Last evening, as I helped Juliet organize her closet, I told her the following story. . .

I wasn’t a tidy child.  That probably doesn’t surprise you, given what an abysmal housekeeper I am today. My room was always a mess. Gramma, as you know, is a scrupulous housekeeper, so she was understandably frustrated by the perpetual chaos that was my bedroom.  From time to time, she could endure it no longer and announced, “This room is a pigsty!  You go in there and don’t come out until it is clean.”

I wondered what I would do if I needed to go to the bathroom.

Another child would have set to work and steadily put the place in order.  I was not that child.  For me, cleaning my room was like an archaeological dig with new discoveries under each layer of debris.  “Oooh,” I would say as I pulled artifacts from under the bed, “my Barbie carrying case!  I haven’t seen this in weeks!”  Then I would become reacquainted with the toy by playing with it for a while.  This was the pattern for the day: unearthing treasures, playing, sighing, returning to my project, repeating until suppertime.

It took most of the day. 

I looked at my daughter. She was dressing Polly Pocket who had been lost in the depths of the closet for weeks.  I put on my pith helmet, grabbed my shovel and brush, and returned to the dig.