If you ask my husband or sons, they will tell you I have very high standards of cleanliness in the house. While that is true, to maintain my sanity I lower my expectations when it comes to the boys’ bedrooms. Even though I occasionally meander into their rooms to clean the junk out from under their beds, for the most part they are free to be messy.
So I thought I’d walk around the house today with my iPhone and take pictures of interesting stuff I saw in their bedrooms.
KID BEDROOM #1
First up is my 15-year-old son’s bedroom. I’m less than thrilled that one pile of clothes consists of freshly laundered and recently folded clothes that apparently never made it into the drawers. (Of course, silly Mom, that would be too much work!) The rest of the clothes are dirty and should be in that white hamper along the wall. For as good as he is at sports, you’d think he could successfully throw all his dirty clothes in that hamper.
So let’s take a closer look inside the hamper…
EMPTY! Not a single piece of clothing is inside. I guess I need to conduct a training session on the purpose of hampers.
Upon leaving his room, I notice electrical tape on his door in the shape of a cross. Is he covering up a hole or expressing his Christianity? I don’t feel like finding a hole in a door, so I quickly settle on the latter and just move on.
KID BEDROOM #2
On to my 14-year-old son’s bedroom. I’m thrilled to see a vast array of personal hygiene products, although I’m a little concerned that his toothbrush is not in the bathroom. I wonder if he’s been brushing his teeth. (Note to self: ask him if he’s been brushing his teeth and don’t flip out when gives me a blank stare.)
By far, the best part of the mess on his dresser is the Lego action figure and spaceship. It confirms that there is still a little boy inside the big boy (all 6 feet, 205 pounds of him).
Then I look up at the ceiling and see this oddity.
Those are two Band-Aids on the ceiling. What’s going on here? Maybe he’s covering a hole made by Airsoft gun BBs? Or maybe he’s expressing his Christianity with Band-Aids? Again, I settle on the latter and move on to the next bedroom.
KID BEDROOM #3
My 12-year-old son likes to work with Perler Beads. The crafty projects he makes consist of arranging plastic beads to create a design in a pegboard and then heating the design with an iron to meld the pieces together. A few days ago, I learned that he pressed a hot iron onto a Hello Kitty bead design for me, without first laying down a towel to protect the carpet.
The Hello Kitty thingamajig turned out perfectly cute. The carpet, however, didn’t fare so well.
On his wall is a crucifix… minus the cross. Jesus was once attached to a brass cross, but now He is just suspended in mid air. What happened to the cross? I’m not sure if it’s right to leave Jesus like that, without the cross, but there is something heartwarming about my son going to the trouble of hanging it in his bedroom despite the MIA cross.
It occurred to me that I should go get either the cross-shaped electrical tape or cross-shaped Band-Aids from the other boys’ bedrooms so Jesus could have something to hang on, but like a good anthropologist (and out of laziness), I decide not to interfere with what I am observing and move on to the final bedroom.
KID BEDROOM #4
Scanning my 9-year-old son’s room, I see there is an unfamiliar clear vinyl pouch between his dresser and toy bin. Why haven’t I noticed this before when vacuuming?
I pull it out and find that it is filled with work to do over the summer. He must have taken it out of his backpack in June and hid it. (Out of sight, out of Mom’s mind!) Now I understand what the teacher meant in mid-August when we saw her and she asked my son if he did his work over the summer. Oops. Better luck next summer.
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Though we are still faced with a (happy) mess, new carpet to buy and late school work to complete, with a little help from above, the state of the union (aka bedrooms), is strong!
