Keeping tidy

At one of our earliest family meetings, we agreed that we would tidy up after ourselves before moving from one activity to the next. Why is it then that our living room is once again in that familiar state in which I would be embarrassed to receive unexpected visitors? Let me describe what I see on the floor ...

• a miniature soccer ball (lives on the living room floor for convenience so that is no surprise);


• a skipping rope;


• my gloves (lying where I dumped them when I got home from cycling with Tessa to her guitar lesson and the library this morning);


• Tessa's back pack and a couple of library books (lying where Tessa dumped them when she got home from cycling to her guitar lesson and the library this morning)


• one complete suit of armour made from cardboard boxes, one incomplete suit of armour made from cardboard boxes and five cardboard boxes which are likely to become armour within the next day or two;


• a bead necklace;


• a pencil;


• a stick (others might object to my labeling this object a stick, preferring to call it a wand; but it did come off one of the willow trees in front of our house);


• the sack our two-person tent is stored in (the tent is currently pitched on Tessa's bedroom floor; she's been sleeping in it for the last week or so);


• a sleeping bag sack (been on the floor since Josiah returned from a sleepover at a friend's place a week ago and I removed the sleeping bag from its sack to hang it over a doorway to air for a few hours ... the sleeping bag has remained draped over Josiah's doorway for the last week, except when it has sat in a heap on the hallway floor because someone wanted the door shut);


• two AAA batteries;


• Tessa's slippers;


• a piece of paper;


• a pencil sharpener;


• a photo album;


• a sweatshirt of Tessa's;


• two scrap book pages made by Josiah and Tessa that have fallen off the wall;


• a supermarket bag containing all Tessa's stickers and special art things.

You get the idea and I haven't even told you about all the stuff dumped on the furniture! (Clean laundry, books, plastic bag, my crochet bag, a piece of paper, MP3 player, camera, keys, a duvet, a bag of dried apricots, and more.) Or what is on the hallway floor. (One of Josiah's slippers, Josiah's climbing bag, Tessa's climbing bag, Josiah's backpack.)

Sometimes, sticking to good intentions is just too much. Think I might go and eat some chocolate.