Creative ways to keep a room clean.

I admit it, I am a neat freak of sorts. It seems that I think better when things are put away and my house is not cluttered. But I was not always this way. Ask my mother...when I was a teen, if one were to survive a foray into the abyss that was my bedroom, he/she was to be commended if not offered psychological counseling for Post Traumatic Stress disorder. Things did not improve that greatly when I first moved into my own place. I was 20 years old and newly married, our little one bedroom apartment was cozy and cluttered. OK...it was a 'pig sty' and a bio-hazard risk area. However, my husband was a trooper, rarely complaining about the dishes that piled in the sink or the piles of folded laundry that teetered precariously on the top of any flat surface that was available. In fact, I think I finally started to realize the importance of a clean home when the pumpkin that we carved for our first Halloween together grew legs and walked to the garbage (in January), oozing moldy pumpkin slime all along the way. Cleaning was not a priority at that time, but that was admittedly ridiculous. Although the process was painful at first, I began to realize that my mother was NEVER going to come clean for me again. I needed to learn a thing or two about keeping a room clean. If I could master keeping just one room at a time clean, eventually I could possibly successfully keep a whole house that way.

The first rule of keeping a room clean is get rid of everything in it. Yes, you understood that correctly. Keep the room void of all furnishings, rugs, curtains or window treatments, light fixtures etc. Now I know what you are thinking, what is the point of having a room that has no furniture, no lights, no embellishments of any sort. But the benefit to this is self-evident....with none of these amenities, nothing will get dirty at all. You will never have to clean this room with the exception of possibly wiping down the walls once a year, as dust is apt to collect on them.

Now, if it is necessary that you furnish that room, then you will need to have a plan for tidying it at least on occasion. So rule number two is to cover everything in plastic. Of course it is tacky, but we are going for ease of effort here, not aesthetic value. So get yourself some of the heavy grade plastic furniture and lamp covering that our grandmother's (or at least someones grandmother) used in the 'old days'. The clear plastic is great because you can still see what is underneath it but it wipes clean so easily. I recommend covering the walls, the floor, the windows and all furnishings (i.e. bed, lamps, clock radio and the cat) with it. The cat is particularly important, as the plastic will cut down on shedding and the annoying occasional fur ball. Of course, this option is best if you have central air conditioning in your home. In the summer the plastic can become a tad uncomfortable for reclining or sitting on. I would recommend spraying a light coat of cooking spray to the backs of your legs so that you will not stick to these synthetic materials.

Well, alright, so you say that plastic is not an option because you have young children and let's face it, plastic and kids are not always a good mix. So option three is, don't have children. They are messy little creatures. They have a tendency to vomit uncontrollably and without warning and always ALWAYS on the one item in the room that can not be salvaged if it is sprayed with regurgitated milk, formula or the 'Gerber' beets that you just fed them. This rule applies to dogs and of course the aforementioned cat as well. They have a homing device built into them that enables them to find the only rug in the house that is either white or not stain protected to hurl on. They cannot seem to manage to make it outside (or to the bucket/toilet in the case of children) or even on the tiled flooring. No, that would make clean up too simple. They must (it is indeed written in the bylaws of every childhood contract) vomit on stain-sucking surfaces so that for years to come you can have the joy of retelling how that splattered looking blemish got on your living room floor.

Now, if you have not followed the first three of these rules, then chances are you have teen aged children and you have furnishings in each of the rooms of your home. The rooms in your home are most likely always cluttered with said teens' things. More than likely you have tried requesting that they put away their possessions but those requests seem to have fallen on deaf ears. So, you have tried cajoling, bargaining, demanding and then threatening..to no avail. Perhaps you are feeling at this point that all hope is lost for ever having a clean and tidy home again...but never fear....OK, who are we kidding...you are absolutely right. You will NEVER have a clean home while you have teens in the house. Worse than toddlers, because although they generally have control of their bodily functions (but not always), they leave a trail behind them none the less. Strewn about your house are socks, shoes, schoolbags, iPod's, cellular phones, notes from their BFF, those little curly things off the edges of notebook pages, note cards, magazines, schoolbooks, candy wrappers.....the list goes on and on and on. And no matter how many times you threaten or cajole or request, they are NEVER going to hear you. You see, inside a teens brain is a little switch that is turned on at the onset of puberty that makes hearing a parental voice a virtual impossibility. This switch allows them to hear only the following from a parent: "yes you may go out", "we are thinking about helping you purchase a car" and "dinner/lunch/breakfast/food is ready". The switch does not allow for any other messages to be received by the teen's brain. It is better to accept the indisputable science on this matter and resign yourself to a messy house until they are 21 or living out of your house whichever comes first. *Note from author* talking to your spouse about cleaning up after himself is pretty much the same exercise in futility.

Since it seems that most people in today's society need to have "things" like beds, chairs, flooring, lamps, and families it seems that these rules are impractical. Unfortunately they are the only way to keep a home spic and span. Since you are most likely like me and incapable of accepting these realities, my advice to you is two fold: get used to talking to walls (since as mentioned previously talking to children, teens and spouses about such matters is exactly like talking to inanimate objects) and get a rake, about 750 garbage bags and some Xanax. Believe me, you will need them.