Go To Your Room!

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day cleaning out Thing 2's room. Thing 1 is quite self motivated and very neat. I just had to convince her to get rid off too much clutter in her room. Thing 2's room was an altogether different story.

First, there wasn't the same level of cooperation. Thing 2 grudgingly tore himself away from his "Battle for Middle Earth" computer game (in truth, he would prefer to live in Middle Earth) and plopped himself down on his reading chair, announcing "I don't need any of it, I don't care, just throw it out!" Clearly, he wanted to do whatever it took to get back to Middle Earth.

So, I had to stand there, somewhat like a QVC Salesperson, saying, "how about this (book, bionicle, marble, piece of string tied around a branch), do you still want it?" Usually he would say "no, just throw it out" without glancing up. Sometimes though, if it was something he had clearly forgotten he even owned, like a bag of small plastic toy pieces with which he used to play a game back in England, he would say "give that to me now." A good thing?

Well, yes and no. Sure he was now playing with the item that had been buried in the abyss of his room. However, he was also OOC, out of commission, for helping clean up himself. So I had to keep getting him to focus on the task at hand, which for me was cleaning his room and for him was getting back to Middle Earth.

"Come on," I would blurt out "if you ever want to get back to Middle Earth you are going to have to pay attention! Now do you want to keep these Doctor Who cards which you made my drive around half of England to find as each store ran out, thanks to you and your little eight year old friends?" The answer was of course no. I should have wanted him to keep the darn cards because of what he had put me through to get them. But the truth is, in the end, I am a realist. I knew he hadn't looked at them once since we moved in over a year ago. I also knew he had no friends here that related to them. So I was completely fine with him wanting to throw them out.

However, then came not the Battle for Middle Earth, but the Battle for Middle Ground-with my husband. Hubby decided to come in during the delicate negotiation process, reach in to the garbage bag, fish around and announce "Doctor Who cards? What? You can't throw those out!" To which came my reply of "Yes he can and he just did. Now leave it and let us get on with it."

He thought I was busy, but in fact I did notice that he had left with the Dr. Who cards in hand. So, later I had to find where he had squirreled them away and throw them away, again.

Actually, there were several things that we found in Thing 2's room which rightfully belonged to the Hubster, though he had purchased them under the guises of presents for Thing 2. These included: A book entitled "107 Youth Soccer Drills", and another book entitled "Discovering The Golden Compass, A Guide To Philp Pullman's Dark Materials." Did he not remember that the only way Thing 2 "read" the first two books in the series was when I read them to him? If that book was meant for anyone, I guess I would be the most appropriate member of the household, certainly not Thing 2.

Of course, in cleaning any 10 year old boys room you are bound to find one or two disgusting thing. In this, Thing 2 did not fail. I encountered several stale packages of partly eaten lifesavers. These registered a 2 on the gross scale. What came out as an instant 10 however, was the peeled, petrified remains of a clementine, found in two halves, on different parts of his bookshelf. What? How? Never mind that this clearly broke the rule of no taking food upstairs. I am guessing this must have been some night where I said they each had to eat a clementine and I had dutifully even peeled it for them. He probably snuck it up to his room and decided his shelf would make a great hiding place.

I am seriously thinking of sending the kids to their room more often. It is amazing what they can find there. Not just disgusting things that need to be taken away before the Board of Health is summoned, but toys and games and books and artwork they forgot they even owned. The silence around the rest of the house would be a perk I wouldn't mind either. "Go to your room" it is going to be my new mantra.