CLEANING THEORY

“One day you’ll miss the day with your little one” – I repeat to myself when I step on the block.

“Cleaning is fun” is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. And maybe you don’t believe me, but I try to pass on the same lie to my children. My dad used to say:

“Cleaning up after the kids is like shoveling snow off the front steps, and then it snows again when you’re done.”

Now that I have two children, I understand this wisdom even more.

How this wisdom plays out in my life depends 90% on my children’s mood. 10% depends on my own strength and patience. I think I should express the tidy-up process as a percentage:

• 20% of cleaning a room is arguing about a toy that went missing ages ago.

• 5% or 10% of cleaning is matching the box to the toy you found. In the 5%, the choice usually falls on the first box nearby. 10% is checking the next two boxes and giving up.

• 30% of cleaning a room is complaining and blaming each other for the mess, or even better, blaming someone who isn’t there. Sentence type:

“It’s not my mess, it was definitely Viktoria (our cousin),” and a more fun example from the younger daughter:

 “It was Dad’s fault.”

Here, I have to protect Dad, because now a 2-year-old princess blames him for everything.

5% of cleaning is an extremely dangerous situation when an older child calls me from the room, shouting:

 “Mommy, Mommy, Dorothy ate something she found in Lego blocks!”

Then I have a heart attack because there are so many possibilities. For example:

1. pieces of Lego bricks (which never happened),
2. old crisps (which happened),
3. an old candy that my daughter was just licking, after a while, saying: “YUCKY!!!”

 After this accident, children forget to clean and start to build Lego constructions. 

40% of cleaning is just tidying up Lego blocks.

What percentage of the time is spent cleaning with children?

Certainly more than I could have cleaned up on my own. With the help of the children, the mess remains, maybe smaller, maybe bigger than before the cleaning. It’s important for me to repeat the process to teach my child the habit of tidying up. I hope that soon, step by step, we will be able to achieve at least 50% of cleaning up their toys together.

I’m now seeing progress in my children’s cleaning habits.

https://littlepuzzlesandme.com/from-one-year-with-my-children-to-another-few/

They’re picking up individual toys and putting them away in the box, or taking an empty glass after finishing a drink, or a plastic lollipop wrapper. Believe me, I’ve walked past teenagers countless times who, after lunch, left a plastic sandwich box on the bench, with a trash can just around the corner.

So, of course, my children might get a solid 10% for cleaning up, but the learning curve is already taking hold. Since they recently created a pen holder, markers have disappeared from the floor and desk, and they regularly put them back in the container. https://littlepuzzlesandme.com/how-children-make-pencil-holder-from-toilet-paper-rolls/

It’s a small thing, but it’s something, and it makes me, Mommy, very happy. And finally a joke from my friend:

Honey, shiny apartment you had 2 kids ago.