Sprog 1’s room will be the death of me. Yesterday I threatened to make it the death of her. My exact words when I picked her up from school were: “I cleaned your room yesterday for the last time. If it gets messy again I will kill you … or throw all your stuff away.”
There are a few flaws in this pronouncement. The first is that I wouldn’t actually kill her and we both know it. I will just feel really murderous and yell a lot. The second is that the Sprogs have no real concept of how to tidy up properly. They think it just involves throwing everything in the cupboard and shutting the door quickly before it all falls out again.
Rubbish I removed from Sprog 1’s cupboard, drawers and shelves yesterday: 4 feathers, 5 colored matchsticks, 2 half deflated balloons, a cookie in the shape of a vampire, 500 little shards of paper, 3 Toys R Us catalogues, 4 plastic bags, 2 egg cartons, 2 cardboard boxes, endless broken craft projects …
Her bed presents it’s own challenges. I extracted 1 rug, a pair of dirty undies, track suit pants, 3 tops, 2 pairs of socks, 50 stuffed animals and 20 books from it.
Despite my efforts I still couldn’t locate her missing elephant slipper.
Fark it was annoying.
I might not care so much about the state of her room if it wasn’t the first thing people see when they enter the house. Her bedroom is right next to the front door.
I pretend to Husband that I want to move the Sprogs’ bedrooms upstairs because I’m worried about them sneaking out of the house when they are teenagers, but the real reason is to move all their crap upstairs where I – and all my visitors – can’t see it.
The only problem with this plan is that I’m just as much of a filth pig as my children. The photo accompanying this blog is my room.
So I’m not sure what moving my crap – instead of her crap – closer to the front door would really achieve.
OH, ONE MORE THING …
I’ve written a blog for Village Voices on creating a Mexican banquet for 12 people (that’s a pic of the dessert, Mandarin Mousse, above).
Check out the recipes at http://blogs.kidspot.com.au/villagevoices/feed-a-crowd-mexican-feast/
housegoeshome 
Glad u confessed that the photo was of your room. Was wondering why Sprog 1 would have a bra!
My mother used to threaten us that if she found anything under our beds she would throw it into the back yard for the dog to play with. We didn’t take any notice until one day we arrived home from school to find the back yard looking like Steptoe’s and the dog happily chewing away on our stuff.
Don’t know if it would work with chooks though.
Oh my God, I love the list of things you found in her room…crafting gone wrong…