Cleanup Time

Yesterday we were doing our occasional cleanup of the dining room table. Since we are a busy, young family, we eat most of our meals at the kitchen table, reserving our dining room for special occasions. When it’s been a while since our last special occasion, our dining room table trends toward looking more like a play table than anything used for eating. Another thing that only happens occasionally, unless prompted by a special occasion, is a good solid cleaning of our house. Sure, we keep up with the day-to-day basic chores, but I am far from a perfect housekeeper, and the reality of our house often reflects this. With this background in mind, yesterday I charged R and G with cleaning up the Legos on the dining room table. Both R and G love Legos. They come by this honestly, as both SPH and I loved Legos growing up, too. Now that they’re getting older, we have moved from Quattro blocks to Duplo blocks to the traditional Lego-sized Legos. The kits we buy are getting more and more involved, and the pieces seem to be getting smaller and smaller with each successive purchase. Anyway, after the initial complaining subsided, the boys started gathering up the Legos nicely. I was in the kitchen preparing dinner and thinking to myself, “This is going well” (which, by the way, almost always ensures that things will not continue to go well). Next thing I hear is: “NOOOOOOO, G! That doesn’t belong in this box! NO! Get that out of there!” I peek around the corner and see R and G wrestling on the dining room floor, instead of gathering up the remaining miniscule pieces of Legos that tend to fall under the table and hide away until a big cleanup. G was obviously trying to help, but R was having none of it. Putting down my mixing spoon, I walked around the corner to investigate. I asked R what was going on and he replied, “G is trying to put this into the Lego box, but it is not a Lego!” From afar, it looked like one of the small orange pieces of a helicopter Lego kit he received for Christmas, but as I got closer… …it was (yikes) a petrified piece of shredded cheddar cheese. Actually, there were several. This immediately ended Lego cleanup time, as I grabbed the kitchen broom and did a quick sweeping of the dining room floor. Not the way I want to be reminded that I need to clean up after dinner more thoroughly… SPC
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