Pigpen. The Saga of ______'s Room.

Mom's view:

_________ picked the topic, which he initially just said was about his “room.” Given this broad topic choice and the fact that __________ is the ultimate consumer, I naturally assumed his post would be a long list of items he’d like to purchase in an effort to create a swinging middle school bachelor pad. He later revealed that the topic is, more specifically, the cleanliness of his room. I’m pretty sure I made a face, since that’s like saying the topic is the peaceful sound of a fire alarm.

In addition to being the ultimate consumer, __________ is a hoarder. Every available drawer, cabinet, closet and basket is filled with stuff that is hard to classify but appears to be something we might need one day, because for some reason everything ___________ owns ends up broken down into unidentifiable components.

Whenever we clean, I end up holding up plastic caps, or wires, or something that seems like it might be necessary to make something else work and asking, “Hey, what is this?” “Should I keep this?” The answer is usually unsatisfactory.
“That’s the wire to the remote control for the Spider Man game I had when I was four.”
“Where’s the game?”
“We threw it out because the remote control didn’t work.”

Sometimes, I’ll find things that have been created out of other things using pieces of a science kit and scotch tape.

“What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s a burglar alarm I made out of the buzzer from the Operation game and my cd player. It didn’t really work.”
“Where’s the rest of the Operation game?”
“We threw it out because the buzzer was gone.”

And so on. These are not actual conversations we’ve had, since I can’t remember the real ones exactly, but they’re close.

It’s a little frustrating, from a parent’s point of view. It’s hard to comprehend how a child who generally appears to be sitting still, enjoying a show about obnoxious kids, can nonetheless end up half buried in a pile of detritus by the time the sitcom is over.

Then again, he comes by it honestly. When I think back to my own room, I seem to recall that I had a room packed full of random stuff myself. There was something comforting about the sheer volume I’d collected, and I balked at the thought of throwing it all out. Every once in a while I’d be banished to clean it, at which point I’d begin to randomly open drawers, revisiting the junk of years past. Nothing would get thrown out, and eventually when it was close to dinner time I’d just shove everything back into the available space and mash the new junk on top of it.

Oh alright. Just shut your door and we’ll call it a wash.

Son's view:

I think my pigsty of a room is great. It makes me feel relaxed and safe when I go to bed. All the junk and old stuffed animals are comforting. I mean if I changed my room I wouldn’t be happy with any of the results. When I changed my sheets it took me a while to get adjusted to the new sheets we bought last year. Also [I think I speak for all of kid-kind here] I think we shouldn’t clean our rooms to perfection. I mean the occasional dusting and picking up the clothes on the floor is necessary, but not the changing of the sheets all the time [but you have to wash them regularly, and when the, how can I put this in neater terms, the acid comes up from your stomach]. So parents, DON’T MAKE CHILDREN CLEAN THEIR ROOMS! Please.