A group of moms folding report cards together pass the time talking about their sons. We taper the swelling pride of their recent football accomplishments with sarcastic remarks about their clean rooms, always an easy teen target for complaint.
We discover our spaces are no different.
Walking through piles on the floor is like managing land mines. Sarcastically, I share my son's three pile organizational method: the obviously folded pile which is sometimes still in the basket, the dirty laundry pile, and the already worn but can be worn again pile. Another admittedly perfectionist mom offers her solution of Saturday grounding if the rooms are cluttered with clothes.
A couple other moms and I, the recovering perfectionist mom, admit we gave up the laundry grounding ghost a while ago. Our logic their space is now their space, unless it invades ours. We recommend closed doors. I recall my fair warnings to my eighteen year old senior son: "I'm telling ya,
you are going to be in big trouble when you get to college and have to room with someone."
Not realizing my fortune in my son's three pile organization, one mom enlightens me. Her son will not wear his clothes more than once and his brother desperately tarries to convince him otherwise: "When you do your own laundry, I'm telling ya man, you will wear your clothes more than once." We laugh in the knowing that when they have to pay for their laundry and spend their own time, they will wear their jeans until they stand up in the corner of the room on their own. (Easier access I would suppose.)
But her eighteen year old boy along with mine are invading our space! They have a fourth laundry pile. They leave their laundry on the laundry room counter for extended periods of time and frequently dress from it. My son has come down nearly naked in search of clothes quite a few times.
I realize your easy, don't know my son's world solution would be to let him do his own laundry and simply force him to take his laundry upstairs.
But isn't it just like life that our easy solutions aren't how others sort, fold, launder, and organize life, and we have to learn to manage living surrounded with the messes of life.
But it is also just like life that another person's way of living and organizing their space affects how we live and are able to manage our world. Isn't it so true that we are, at times, smoothly welcomed into another person's world, and even miraculously after they share their dirty laundry. Then, other times, we encounter great difficulty navigating life and understanding the way other people choose to sort their lives.
Isn't it just like life that the simple solution seems to just complete the work for another to save them the time and trouble, to give advice to our kids, to our brothers, to our sisters so they will learn now and avoid getting washed out in pain learning later. But isn't it just like life that we often don't heed others advice because we learn best by living through the experience, not just hearing the warnings.
And when our dirty laundry is aired to the world, isn't it just like life that when we need to clean up our mess, we are grateful for the past advice we were given and really love the brother that tells us "I'll tell ya"
without an added "I told you so."
We discover our spaces are no different.
Walking through piles on the floor is like managing land mines. Sarcastically, I share my son's three pile organizational method: the obviously folded pile which is sometimes still in the basket, the dirty laundry pile, and the already worn but can be worn again pile. Another admittedly perfectionist mom offers her solution of Saturday grounding if the rooms are cluttered with clothes.A couple other moms and I, the recovering perfectionist mom, admit we gave up the laundry grounding ghost a while ago. Our logic their space is now their space, unless it invades ours. We recommend closed doors. I recall my fair warnings to my eighteen year old senior son: "I'm telling ya,
you are going to be in big trouble when you get to college and have to room with someone."
Not realizing my fortune in my son's three pile organization, one mom enlightens me. Her son will not wear his clothes more than once and his brother desperately tarries to convince him otherwise: "When you do your own laundry, I'm telling ya man, you will wear your clothes more than once." We laugh in the knowing that when they have to pay for their laundry and spend their own time, they will wear their jeans until they stand up in the corner of the room on their own. (Easier access I would suppose.)
I realize your easy, don't know my son's world solution would be to let him do his own laundry and simply force him to take his laundry upstairs.
But isn't it just like life that our easy solutions aren't how others sort, fold, launder, and organize life, and we have to learn to manage living surrounded with the messes of life.
But it is also just like life that another person's way of living and organizing their space affects how we live and are able to manage our world. Isn't it so true that we are, at times, smoothly welcomed into another person's world, and even miraculously after they share their dirty laundry. Then, other times, we encounter great difficulty navigating life and understanding the way other people choose to sort their lives.
Isn't it just like life that the simple solution seems to just complete the work for another to save them the time and trouble, to give advice to our kids, to our brothers, to our sisters so they will learn now and avoid getting washed out in pain learning later. But isn't it just like life that we often don't heed others advice because we learn best by living through the experience, not just hearing the warnings.
And when our dirty laundry is aired to the world, isn't it just like life that when we need to clean up our mess, we are grateful for the past advice we were given and really love the brother that tells us "I'll tell ya"
without an added "I told you so."
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