Never Store Cheese in the Closet

  If it weren’t for my kids, I would never have considered the advantages of keeping cheese in the cleaning supply closet for several days. These are the sorts of enlightening tidbits that you pick up when you become a parent.

  My children love to help. They are overflowing with excitement and energy when it comes to all sorts of chores. Except, of course, the ones they are supposed to be doing, such as cleaning up their messes. Still, whenever they see us carrying something heavy or working with some sort of high-powered appliance, they are eagerly on board. Particularly if it is potentially messy or dangerous.

  Unfortunately, a child’s desire to help you is inversely proportional to the actual level of help they are physically capable of providing. So in letting them help, we are actually making things take longer and usually creating more of a mess. Still, we don’t want to discourage them, because we know that eventually the day will come that they will be able to lift more than three pounds and reach higher than 3 feet. We want them to grow up to be helpful, despite all the disasters, pain and financial ruin it may cause.

  Once, we had just parked in a parking garage somewhere that prints out a ticket that you are supposed to hang on to and give to the attendant when you are ready to leave. Because it takes a little while to unharness, unbuckle, unlatch and unload two squirmy and excited two-year olds, and gear up with the necessary 65 pounds of diaper bags and other supplies, we asked our older son to grab the ticket off the dash for us. He eagerly jumped into the car, ready to be of help. When we were ready, the first thing we noticed was that the torn, wrinkled, sticky piece of paper that our son handed us did not look like the parking garage ticket. In fact, it looked a lot more like half of the town registration sticker from the windshield.

  Another time, after we finished wreaking havoc in the grocery store (see a previous post for more detail), the girls wanted to help us bring in and put away the groceries. Obviously they want to carry large, spillable and fragile things like milk jugs or loaves of bread. Somehow, amidst a flurry of can stacking, jar dropping and bread smashing, we kind of lose track of the kids. You can also lose track of some of the groceries. For example, a half hour later while trying to make a sandwich, I couldn’t find the sliced cheese. My wife swore that she had picked some up. For some reason, it never crossed my mind to check in our cleaning supply closet, which is where I found it. Somehow, I overlooked the block of cheese, bag of French fries and frozen roll of cinnamon buns on a lower shelf until several days later. After a brief discussion with my wife, we agreed that this food was no longer safe to eat. (The discussion went something like me saying, “Do you think-” and my wife instantly replying, “No.”)

  When I expressed my frustration at finding something not put away where it is supposed to be, my wife laughingly said, “That’s what it feels like to live with you.” Apparently, I have some difficulty differentiating between adult and children's clothes when I put away laundry. Also pants and shirts, socks and underwear, sweaters and t-shirts, and so forth. We go through a lot of clothes at our house, so to me it all starts to look the same.

  Here is a list of other ways our kids have “helped” us.

• I cleaned the TV: Our daughters like to wipe off the TV screen or windows with a baby wipe. It would be more helpful if the baby wipe hadn’t just been used to clean syrup or spaghetti sauce off their faces, but at least they are trying.

• I fixed the dresser: Once, in the middle of the night, one of our daughters helped us by taking every single article of clothing out of her dresser and leaving them unfolded in a pile on the floor. Not a great way to be woken up at midnight, but at least all the drawers would then close all the way!

• I cleaned the floor: In other words, “I spilled water all over everything in the basement.”

• I made the table (or chair, desk, my face, etc.) pretty: Add a splash of color to your décor through the extensive use of stickers and crayons. Don’t forget the permanent markers!

  There are several things to remember when dealing with a child’s attempts at helping you: 1.They are only trying to help so they can earn your praise, so please be patient with them; 2. When a child wakes you up in the middle of the night to tell you that they fixed something or cleaned something up, it’s never the blessing it seems, and finally; 3. Always aggressively clip and use coupons to offset the cost of improper food storage techniques so you can at least break even on the grocery bill.