How to Feel Evil

Anna’s school was closed today and yesterday for their ‘winter break’, which one is supposed to use for quality time with ones children.  Bjarki’s daycare stayed open though, and Finnur couldn’t take any time off, so it was just me and her.  And what did I make her do?  Clean Her Room.

I am so evil.

We began yesterday morning by doing something ‘fun’ first, i.e. finally assembling that Ikea chest of drawers that has been mocking me for a whole month.  Much to my dismay, I discovered that this particular item differs from other wider family members in that it comes fully disassembled, not even the sides having been put together.  Anna was ever so helpful during the assembly though, sorting all the bits, and putting in pins and screws, so it went quicker than it otherwise would have.

A good while later, once we only had the drawers themselves left, I steered her towards her own disaster of a room, and began by having her empty out her drawer unit.  Every single drawer contained ‘whatever’ and the total contents filled a whole laundry basket.  We wiped the drawer unit down, and then I gave Anna the task of sorting the laundry basket stuff into ‘stays in the room’ or ‘leaves the room’ piles.  Oh, how she whined!

She made a bit of progress before mostly throwing in the towel around 14:30 and insisting on helping me with the final assembly.  Then it was off to swim practice, and I went to the gym, so that was the end of that.  That evening I evilly told her that she would not be able to play with her friends until we were done sorting etc, so she went to bed knowing her fate.

This morning we again got started around 10 am, but this time I stayed in the room with her the whole time, coaxing her on, and sorting her ‘stays in the room pile’ into smaller piles, and then putting them back into the original drawer unit.  (Now I just have to label the darn drawers!)

Once the laundry basket was fully sorted, we moved to the next (!!!) laundry basket of stuff, then to two medium sized blue boxes which have had ‘mysterious contents’ since we moved from the US, to a few smaller boxes, to the three large drawers under her bed.  In the meantime, one of her friends arrived shortly after lunch, and she was promptly roped into helping (and I didn’t feel bad, because she’s the friend that has helped Anna ‘clean’ before by putting stuff wherever it would fit, partially causing the massively unsorted mess in the first place).

By four pm Anna was getting royally fed up with it all, and the end was in sight, so I let them go out to play.  I managed to vacuum the room at 16:30, and then it was off to pick Bjarki up for his swim-school-session.

All in all, the room is now doing pretty well.  The desk is the new dumping ground though, and we’ll need to have a ‘talk’ about what belongs there and what doesn’t.  We didn’t get started on the 2-3 bags of random stuff that are hiding in the garage, and we’ll have to do some maneuvering to fish out all the stuff that’s hiding under her bed still.

But all in all, I feel like I can now enter her room without gnashing my teeth, which is a huge victory, and boy do I feel evil! 🙂

p.s. I’ll try to post pictures tomorrow. 🙂