Parenting is just one long conversation with myself, apparently.

Like many parents, I spend a fair amount of my life time and energy stressing out about and arranging for my kids to clean their rooms, organize their belongings, purge broken toys and to donate outgrown and un-played with games, and generally try to keep the chaos that surrounds them to a minimum. And my smalls are awesome. They never say “no,” they just don’t get the job done. Either they forget and start playing, or they stuff crap everywhere so that it “looks” cleaned up but it’s one bursting cupboard door away from a “random crap tsunami.”

But today? Today was different. Today, I really thought that I had finally achieved a new level of success in my quest. Today, one of them had *finally* taken my words to heart and actually cleaned off the top of his dresser without me asking/telling/cajoling. It was pure magic, I tell you.

This is what I saw when I walked up the stairs and glanced down the hall toward his room:

This is the K’Nex ferris wheel set that he received for Christmas. He spent a lot of time building it and is very proud of it. So, naturally, I assumed that this pride of accomplishment had finally given him the motivation that he needed to finally clean off the top of his dresser without being asked, so that he could display his build.

I was woefully, dreadfully wrong.

After taking a moment to marvel at how great the cleaned up area looked, I made a mistake. I glanced down and to the right.

This is not progress. This is not the direction in which I was hoping to go. Ugh.

Three days until the New Year. Think there’s still time to impart the importance of not living in a disorganized, hoardy mess? Yeah. I didn’t think so either.

~A.