Stop Picking Up Their Clothes!

Trust me, it’s hopeless.  Do you dread walking into your kid’s room?  Are you tired of picking up socks, clothes and toys off of the floor?  Do you beg and bribe your kids to clean their rooms?  Well, you might as well stop right now and save yourself years of stress and anxiety.  You can reduce your future botox bills by slowing down the onset of worry wrinkles and simply accepting the fact that your sweet little child, that adorable cutie who messes up the charming, cozy room you toiled over to decorate just for him or her, is just going to one day leave home to live in a pig sty (a pig sty you may well be paying good money for – in the form of college tuition!)

Does A Higher Education Lead To A Lower Standard Of Living?

We try to teach our kids well and do our best to prepare them for “the real world.” Well, if they are college bound there is a good chance that their real world will consist of cramped rooms overflowing with piles of dirty laundry and sinks full of dirtier dishes.  I was in Boston this week and had the pleasure of visiting my son the Berklee student for the first time since he has moved to Beantown.  It was wonderful to see him, I am enormously proud of him and I love him dearly, but if he and his roommates have any dreams of ever entertaining a young woman in their, er, “humble” abode, they might want to sign up for the Monastery now.

Could It Be Hereditary?

I’d like to think that I was much cleaner and more domesticated in my college years, but I wonder if that is just the rose colored lenses of my memory.  In any event, if you spend a lot of time picking up after your kids, take my advice and just stop.  Let them live like pigs now, and know that you will just be doing your duty to prepare them properly for college.

What do you think?  Do you struggle with messy rooms, and if so, what ages are your kids?  What  kind of cleanliness inspection would your dorm room have passed?  Please air your dirty laundry in the comments!

Jeff Sass is the proud dad of ZEO (Zach, 22, Ethan, 20 and Olivia, 18).  He is also a seasoned entertainment and technology exec and active social media enthusiast.  You can see more of Jeff’s writing at Sassholes! and Social Networking Rehab and you can listen to Jeff on the Cast of Dads podcast.?

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