Should I Pick That Up?

A young mother of my acquaintance, my daughter, was recently bemoaning the fact that her kids forever seem to have messy bedrooms.  Because those kids are my grandchildren, I was quick to jump to their defense.

“You and your sister were not exactly neat-freaks at that age,” I said.  “Don’t you remember how I used to remind you all the time about picking things up?”

“Remind us?” my daughter replied.  “I’d say it was more like ranting and raging!” 

“No way!” I said.  But their mother and I did resort to some desperate strategies to correct the problem.

Our daughters were never messy about their persons.  They took pains to dress nicely, they kept their teeth cleaned and their hair brushed neatly, and they looked after their belongings.  It’s just that they didn’t keep their bedrooms in good order.  And that drove us to distraction.

It was always difficult to understand this apparent anomaly, how two girls who weren’t shambolic by nature could have such untidy rooms.  My wife and I tried to convince ourselves that the messiness was, perhaps, nothing more than a statement of burgeoning selfhood and a need for privacy, independence, and freedom.

That made us feel good about the girls’ developing personalities, but it did little to assuage our concern with the chaos in the bedrooms.

Typically, the following scene might have greeted you if you walked into either of their rooms.  The bed would be covered with an assortment of articles and clothing—schoolbooks, dolls, portable radios, magazines, and so forth—things they always claimed they were not finished using yet.

The clothing, which might have numbered as many as three or four different combinations of blouses and skirts, were not dirty yet.  The dirty stuff, we had long since discovered, was often lying under the bed.

Two or more of the dresser drawers might be slightly open, with pieces of clothing hanging partially out.  The top of the dresser would be hidden underneath various impedimenta that adorned it.  Previously-used glasses and dishes were sometimes among those items.

The closet door would be ajar, mainly because shoes and other items were blocking it from closing.  In the dim interior, blouses and dresses would be seen drooping at odd angles from the hangers—those that hadn’t fallen to the floor.

Scattered across the carpet, strewn in an apparently-random pattern, you’d see shoes and sandals of mixed pairings.

“What’s wrong with it, Dad?” I would hear when I dared to ask why they never picked anything up.  “I know right where everything is!”

“Oh yeah?” I once countered, brilliantly (I thought).  “Then how come you couldn’t find your jacket this morning?”

“Because somebody picked it up and hung it in the hall closet without telling me!”

End of that discussion.

Their mother and I eventually grew tired of asking ourselves, “Should we pick that up?”  So we resorted to using a system of logical consequences whenever we encountered certain of the girls’ idiosyncrasies that didn’t appeal to us.  And for the most part, they worked.

For example, if they didn’t pick up and clean off their dishes after supper, they were served breakfast the following morning on the unwashed plates.  We didn’t have to do that too often to bring about the desired result.

If they put their dirty clothes into the clothes hamper inside-out, they got them back, washed and neatly folded, but still inside-out.  We had to admit that little ploy stopped working, however, when they actually started wearing the inside-out items as a fashion-statement.  But we did stop washing items that weren’t turned right-side out, and eventually, of course, they became responsible for doing their own laundry.

Still, it seemed nothing we tried had any discernible effect on the messy bedrooms for the longest time.  The only thing we knew for sure is that we weren’t going to pick up their things.  

Finally, we were able to get them to dust and clean once a week, and when they discovered that charm-bracelets, ankle-socks, and tiny briefs would be sucked up the vacuum hose, they quickly realized everything had to be picked up and put away before they could start.  My wife and I exchanged a few high-fives at that point.

We used to visit the rooms right after they were finished, just to see what they looked like in a pristine state, because in a matter of a few hours, it seemed, they’d be right back to their previous disarray.  Cleaner, to be sure, but messy once again.

Eventually, for our own sanity, we decided it would be wiser to let the girls express their feelings of selfhood by leaving their rooms in disarray.  But to protect our own sensibilities, we insisted their bedroom doors remain closed so we didn’t have to close our eyes as we walked by!

In any event, I’m not sure the recent conversation with my daughter convinced her I was right about how she and her sister had never wanted pick things up.  But it did give me great joy when she pointed to a pile of stuff my grandson had left in the living-room. 

“Do you think I should pick that up?”, she said, her tone of frustration evident.

Oh, thank you, Lord! 

What goes around comes around.

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2021}