Hovel Living

When you're cleaning the house after spending large quantities of time NOT cleaning the house, the task can take some time.

This leads to a lot of time for thinking while cleaning.

Thoughts such as this: I've done a crappy job instilling any sort of 'cleanliness' thoughts or actions in any or all of my 4 children.

The Top Ten Things I Wish I Had Taught My Children About Not Living In a Hovel

That title needs some work but due to all the cleaning I've put a crick in my neck and am now nursing a migraine and so it shall stay just the way it is. Grammatically awkward. I'm guessing what's coming next isn't going to read too pretty either.

1. Aiming skills. Accurate aiming skills.

2. Better pet choosing skills. Choose an ugly hairless dog at the pound, not a cute fluffball that will grow into a 90 pound fluffball that sheds when she's hungry, needs to go out to pee or is just bored.

3. Dirty ANYTHING does not go on the floor. It goes in the laundry hamper, dishwasher or garbage. Out the flipping window for all I care, just not on the flipping floor.

4. When your mother spends 100 bucks at Ikea and spends 4 hours assembling a bunch of particle boards into toy storage using one small bent piece of metal, you can stop using your bedroom floor, the living room floor, the stairs and the hallway for toy storage.

5. The van is not a toy storage unit. Yes, your father dented it at Ikea, but that doesn't make it a toy storage unit.

6. Chairs are for sitting on, not hanging coats, sweaters, shirts, work uniforms and used socks.

7. The parental bedroom and bathroom are OFF LIMITS!!! (Why can't a two year old eat a thiefed bag of crackers in her own bed? What's that about?)

8. Every 'thing' has a place. And its place is not on the kitchen counter.

9. Writing utensils are for paper, not skin, walls, toilet seat lids or computer screens.

10. Your mother is not your maid. If she was a maid, you would be paying her 40 dollars an hour to clean the hovel of a house you live in. And I'm pretty sure maids won't stoop to finding out where the heck that vile smell is coming from only to discover it's an uneaten sandwich that someone's loving and devoted mother made for some ungrateful child that has been left in the bottom of a backpack for, oh, I'm just guessing here, 2 weeks.

Or something like that.

Do you have something you wish you had instilled in your child? I'd love to hear I'm not the only one floundering out here in this vast sea of disorganized, messy hovel living.