Rarely do I attempt cleaning the rooms of my boys.  Sure I run a vacuum over the path they maintain from the door to their beds, every now and then.  On the rare occasions I dust, I will also clean any of their surfaces that are clear, which are not many.  Sometimes, I even change the sheets on their beds, which when you consider the bunk bed, it can be a labor of love and acrobatics.  Kind of a Valentine’s Day presentation of Cirque du Soleil.

The level of filth in their rooms had however reached a level that was unavoidable.  A level of filth that was best embodied by the dog sticking his snout in a random pile of stuff on their floor.  Suddenly, Kirby the Beagle was munching away on something.  The problem was that the general landfill quality of the room prohibited us from even accurately guessing what Kirby was eating.  A Lego?  A stray piece of candy?  My personal guess, a dry piece of pasta from a school art project?  We will never know, but we did know that taking immediate action would be necessary.

Little by little we returned superhero toys to their correct storage box.  Recycled piles of miscellaneous school papers.  Found homes for random trinkets.  Reduced the number of treasurers on the top of each dresser to two per child.  We even cleared away knick-knacks from the windowsill, in the event it is ever warm enough again to open their windows.  In the end, we used a vacuum, but a shovel would have sure come in handy.

Returning from the basement with a load of clothes to be folded.  I heard the boys frolicking in their brother’s room.  There on the bed, strewn here and there, were the stuffed animals that we have just neatly packed into a Spiderman storage box.  The “Battle to Find the Floor” had moved to a new room.  New challenges awaited.  Sure that my shots were up-to-date, I dove right in.  Vacuum in one hand, shovel in the other.