A Clean House: Parenting Myth Busted

Do you ever feel like you’ve become a living breathing caricature of yourself? Or at least of who you thought you would be? You know what I’m talking about, right? That list of things that you swore when you got older or this or that happened in your life that you would never do or that would never happen? Then inevitably those things happen and you’ve turned into one big walking talking contradictory version of yourself? And all you can do is laugh? Or curse? Or cry?

I had one of those moments today. The “I will never” thing was “I will never let my house become overrun by toys.” Yes, I know. Go ahead and just start laughing at me right now. But I swore up and down that I would never let it happen. I’d been in so many houses over the years where there were toys just EVERYWHERE and I couldn’t understand how it could happen. And in my judgmental pre-kids mind, I thought “When I have kids, I will never let the house get overrun by the kids’ stuff.” Don’t get me wrong, I never intended to have a pristine home. Homes that are too neat and clean make me uncomfortable, like I’m afraid to sneeze or cough in them and sure as hell wouldn’t want to go to the bathroom there. I like a nice lived-in feel of a home, but I knew for sure I’d never let the house get taken over by kids’ crap.

Today, as I stood looking around the wreckage that used to call my house and walked from room to room stepping over blocks and action figures and crap that I can’t even identify, all I could do was laugh and think “Oh, Sandy, you fool.”

I am not even sure how the house got to this point. I guess it happened slowly. But fast at the same time. Kind of how kids grow. Like some individual days may seem like they take years to pass but when you look back at it all over the course of a year or years, it all happened so fast. Yes, that is how my house came to look a toy chest exploded all over the place...slowly but fast all at the same time.

It was so easy when my son was a baby. Other people bought him toys and that was fine, but we limited the amount of stuff we personally bought. Hell, for the few months, all the kid could do was kind of hit stuff and maybe see the lights or hear the sounds. Inevitably, however, the little shit started rolling over and then crawling and eventually walking. And with each stage of development came a better ability to pull out his crap and play with it. When he was just rolling over and crawling, it was still pretty easy. I pretty much had to give him the toys and then I would put them away when he was done or fell asleep or got distracted by something else that was new and shiny. By the time he was walking though, I should have known it was going to be game over for me. But truthfully, through months 13 through 24, it really wasn’t that bad either even though he was walking. That little shit lured me into a false sense of security that my house was safe.

And then came the twos. In all fairness, I haven’t found the twos to be so terrible. My son is happy and healthy and curious and I try to just roll with the punches of his crazy little tirades and meltdowns realizing that it’s just a developmental thing. However somewhere in the midst of our playing and reading and learning and everything else, that little shit somehow got the better of me and slowly began to take over the house. And I didn’t even realize it was happening.

It probably started off with something like him wanting to read a book and then that book didn’t get put back on the bookshelf because I knew he’d want to read the same book again an hour later. But then one book grew to three books and none of those three books got put away. Then he would want to go pick new books and three new books would come out of his room and to somewhere in the house. The same thing would happen with the toys. At first he just wanted to play with like toys...all of the blocks at the same time or all of the cars or all of the superheroes...but eventually as his imagination grew, those superheroes needed to drive the cars and sometimes they had to read books and one play session turned into 30 things being pulled out. Even at that point though, at the end of the day, I made sure those toys got put away.

I don’t know what happened next or how we got to the point we were at today. It might have been a particularly busy day when I just didn’t have a chance to put stuff away. It might have been because I wasn’t feeling well and I just didn’t get to it. Or I might have just gotten worn down by the little shit and a part of me gave up because it just seemed like a losing battle. Day after day of putting stuff away and literally an hour later he would pull it all back out again and then I’d put it away again. One of those Lather Rinse Repeat cycles of parenting. My guess is that it was a combination of the three.

Don’t get me wrong, my son has also learned over the past year how to clean up. In fact, he’s a champ at it when my stepson is here. My stepson taught the little one the “clean up” song and the two of them would sing it together as they clean up everything. But alone, yea, the tiny little crazy person was just not interested.

Which brings us to today. There were toys everywhere. My dad had been visiting over the past week and he even commented about how messy thing were. Ummmm...thanks, Dad. Like I wasn’t aware that my house was a complete and total mess with toys everywhere. Like I need you to point that out to me. Dick. (Just kidding, Dad. I love you. You big jerk). So today, my dad left and I finished work and was standing there just taking it all in. The mess. The abyss that had become my home.

I knew I had to clean this explosion up but I also wanted the little shit to help. Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook know that I often refer to Liam’s and my interactions as “Toddler Wars.” Today’s Toddler War amounted to Liam freaking out and insisting that he watch a TV show when I wanted him to help me clean up his toys. I ultimately gave him a choice: clean up your room or go take a nap. At 2 ½ he barely naps anymore (except on Saturdays after he finishes back to back soccer and swimming lessons...best money ever spent btw...guaranteed quiet time on a weekend after you wear your kid out...I HIGHLY recommend it), so I really expected him to choose the cleaning part. Nope. The little shit looked right at me and said “Then I take a nap,” crawled up on the sofa with his blanket and went to sleep. That Toddler War battle went to the little shit.

I spent that unexpected free time starting to pile up the toys from all over the other house and relocated them to the little devil’s room. Then I started putting the books that were dumped all over the back of the room away. I put his toy chest baskets all back together and even cleaned up some of the toys. BUT I did not clean up the whole mess. I left a whole pile of mess strewn about his floor and informed my husband when he got home that Liam was not allowed to do anything else until he cleaned up that pile of toys.

When the little shit woke up, he was told that he had to clean his room. After 15 minutes of hysterics and screaming, he finally realized that I wasn’t backing down. About 10 minutes later, he came running into the family room. “Guys, you have to come see this!” We walked into his room and he had actually cleaned the whole thing up. I was pretty impressed. We cheered and high fived and then he asked if we could read a book. So we all laid in the middle of his (clean) floor and read a book. It was a beautiful thing.

So as I sit here tonight, Liam is off chilling and watching a show before bed, my husband and I are watching some TV and I am marveling at my currently clean house. I love being able to see the floor again. I love that I can walk from room to room without having to navigate around a million little parts of things. I kind of want to stay up all night and just enjoy it because I know that by about 10am tomorrow, the floor will be trashed again and the cycle will start anew. Lather Rinse Repeat.

#toys #mess #cleaning #toddlers #Parenting