The Bedroom Disaster Made Me Cry

Recently I went to kiss my tween daughter goodnight.  Yes, there are “tweens” now.  I think it is a girl thing and basically covers ages 10-12, you know, when young ladies first show signs of their haughtiness before true teenage angst… But I digress…

So I entered my daughter’s dim bedroom, and felt a sharp pain in my foot.  I quickly moved to the side, tripped over something shin high (humidifier,) and fell into a pile of things both pointy and soft.  I was still a good foot away from her bed, where she was entranced in videos via headphones, so I crawled carefully over to her and removed them.  “What is up with your room???”  I asked emphatically. “I came to kiss you goodnight and I may need stitches!  Do you even know what all this stuff everywhere is???”  She shrugged her shoulders.  “Tomorrow we clean everything!  I’m serious!  Now turn off those videos before I bleed out!”  Then immediately in the sensitive, protective-mom softer tone, “I love you Baby Girl…”  I wasn’t happy, but c’mon, she IS my baby….  I left the room like I was walking through a minefield.

The next day I came to her door with a couple of garbage bags and a lot of determination.  The room looked like the massive devastation scene in an earthquake movie.  “Ok,” I told her, “This one is garbage, this one is donate.  Let’s go!”

We had to start somewhere, so I started at the front door (since I wasn’t risking anymore injuries,) and she started at the bed (where she had been reclining watching videos.)  I knew within the first 15 minutes that we were both in over our heads.  I don’t think I have uttered the phrases, “What is this?’ and “Do you want this?” more times in my entire middle-aged life.  Seriously.  It was like one of those dreams where you are drowning and you finally reach the shore only to get pulled back in again.  Actually, I believe those dreams are called nightmares and result in cold sweats.

Pile after pile we sorted, tossed, and organized.  The entire room:  under the bed, behind the bed, under the dresser, behind the dresser, under the bookshelf, behind the bookshelf, around every corner, more and more piles were attacked.  Some of my highlights include an unopened letter from school that I was supposed to get 4 months ago marked URGENT, a Halloween costume from 3 years ago, and 10,000 candy/gum/cashew wrappers from God knows when.  Wow was I being optimistic with 2 garbage bags!

I finally lost her about two hours in.  “I can’t do this anymore!” she wailed.  “I believe in you!” I encouraged. “We are almost done!”  She picked up a book from under a Monster High slipper and started reading it. Panting and sweating, I carried on alone.

Almost three hours and four garbage bags later I was done.  One bag of donations, and three for the curb.  I felt like I had just run a marathon, collecting trash all the way.  “Now isn’t this better?” I asked, sweat trickling down my neck.  We both surveyed her new clean, organized boudoir.  “Totally!”

So there are two main lessons I came away with from the hellish room cleaning experience: 

 1.   Check the room often and take action!  Make room cleaning a huge priority for your offspring before the hurricane hits.

And  

2.  Don’t cry into the give-away bag.

I know.  I should have learned the first lesson years ago.  Laissez-faire parenting has been out of style since the 80’s.  But lesson 2 kind of took me by surprise.  Of course it was obvious that her princess dress-up clothes and old Halloween costumes were destined for the donation bag, but when she immediately tossed in her nightlight and princess figurines, my heart fluttered.

And there’s the rub.  Your child is growing up.  Outgrowing her old clothes and toys, but sometimes, you are not.  I mean the nightlight…. THE NIGHTLIGHT?  She couldn’t sleep without it from the moment we put her in her crib until she was… well, I thought yesterday.  We brought it on trips by car and plane, and when it stopped working, the company had replaced it with a new “cooler” light, so we scoured thrift stores and garage sales to find an exact “old school” light.  That light was the most important thing to her, thus to us, for such a long time.  For years it was our mission to find another one that worked, and there she is, just tossing it glibly into the donation bag.  A tear mixed into my sweaty face.

And THE PRINCESSES!  Every single Disney princess INCLUDING the uber rare Pocahantas and Mulan!  Received from the Easter Bunny around age 4.  My daughter absolutely loved them.  All of them.  She would play with them for hours at a time.  Lining them up in different ways. Pairing them up with different partners.  Taking them with her everywhere.  And if one was missing, my husband would search through the night and into days to find that little lost princess.  There were a few nights when I had to put my daughter tearfully to sleep with promises that, “Daddy will find Cinderella, just not tonight.” And bless that man, he always did.  I think he used the night vision feature on his video camera at least once to search for a plastic princess in my daughter’s dark room as she slept.  After 7 years, all princesses are present and accounted for, and currently in the discard pile.  Another tear slides down my face.

My sister always tells me that when I clear out my stuff, take it out of the house immediately.  Don’t look in the bag.  Own your decision and move on.  Maybe I shouldn’t have looked in the bag, but I wasn’t sure if she might actually need something and was even paying attention.  How many folders were rescued that she or her brother can use next year?  I know I am a sap and I need to toughen up.  We all know it’s coming, but it still seems sudden.  Our children are really growing up.  Not babies, not toddlers, not even elementary school kids.  My swaddle baby is a tween.  She has a lava lamp and doesn’t play with princesses anymore.

So now, when I kiss her goodnight, a can walk peacefully from the door to her bed without incident.  She is MY baby, but she is a young lady.  I confiscate her cell phone, tuck the covers around her and tell her how much I love her, while a complete set of Disney princesses slumbers in my dresser drawer.