January 21, 2025
On any given day, our kids’ room is littered with dirty clothes. Their trail of discarded attire reveals distracted wandering over the course of the seemingly simple act of getting dressed: pants inside out on the carpet, underwear tossed in a corner, dress nestled in next to a pillow on the bed.
My kids appear about as bothered by it as a snake whose shed its skin. Meanwhile, I’m Elmer Fudd, constantly scheming, chasing the just out of reach prize of dirty-laundry-on-the-floor zero. Surely there is something I could say, some incentive I could create, some kind of system or plan, some intervention or prodding, that will get them to pick up their clothes, once and for all!
Words are useless, obviously. That doesn’t stop me from trying. I’ve asked sweetly, asked irritatedly, cajoled, teased, reminded, prodded, yelled, yelled, yelled. Clothes make not a single inching movement toward a laundry basket.
I try refusing to wash clothing not safely contained in the closet dirty laundry basket. Anything on the floor is left out. Any partial, periodic success of this threat, the quick shuffle to gather a week’s worth of clothes into the basket on the day the pants drawer runs dry, isn’t worth the effort it requires from me. More problematic: when it comes to wearing dirty clothes to school, I mind it more than they do. She who minds least, wins.
Sure, I’ve successfully gotten the dirty clothes off the floor and into the laundry basket plenty of times—shadowing their morning routine, clucking a tsk tsk tsk of disappointment while just picking up for them. As if whining about how annoying it is while I do it makes it is different than straight up doing it for them. Either way, they got me. While the laundry is technically in the basket, shockingly, the approach does nothing to incentivize the kids to do it themselves. Why would it? The system works perfectly for them as is.
What do I want more, clothes off the floor or the kids to ingrain a habit of doing it themselves?
What bothers me, I realize, is less the clothes than the meaning I’ve made from it. Sure, actual dirty clothes on the floor are a pain. Their space gets cluttered and ugly, no fun for play and certainly not a place I want to snuggle. But what really annoys me is the implication: you can’t be bothered with even the simple act of depositing your used item of clothing into a basket mere feet from where you are standing because of your complete confidence that it is, as the kids say, not your problem. Why do something yourself when your 24-7 unpaid maid service will do it for you? My brilliant strategy of actually picking up for them only reinforces this belief.
My newest scheme—because the cartoon character is never smart enough to stop the fruitless chase and make peace with life as it is—is not to penalize, but to celebrate.
When I catch them ‘being good,’ as I’ve defined in a way that admittedly is almost entirely my preference and not some kind of abstract moral code—when I stumble upon a success, no clothes on the floor, I will celebrate it. Loudly. I will cheer them, I will talk up their amazingness. I will award prizes: Extra time on Libby, where my son reads British soccer magazines. Extra Bluey for the youngest.
One day I notice, for the first time in memory, a distinct lack of my son’s dirty clothes on the floor of his room. To be fair its possible this is because he changed in our bedroom, but whatever, I’ll take a win where I can eke one out. I march downstairs, loudly triumphant:
“We have our first winner in the no dirty clothes awards! I just did a check and CHASE WON! He gets extra Libby time!” Just to rub it in I brag, “and he even picked up the pillows and blankets off the floor so I could do my check, so he gets extra time.”
The girls are suddenly alert. “I didn’t have dirty clothes out,” Estella protests. “Yes you did,” Chase answers authoritatively, “I saw it. You had pants. Haven, you had a dress.”
“Can I have Libby time if I go put my clothes in the dirty clothes basket right now?”
“You can do that, but I won’t award Libby time again til I make my next check. You never know when it could be so you have to be ready!”
“Yeah,” Chase echoes, on my side now, “it might be while we’re at school so we have to be ready.”
“Or while we’re sleeping,” Estella chimes in.
“Yup,” I confirm. “You never know! I’m the prize monster, and you never know when I’ll come in and award prizes!”
Suddenly Haven, perched on a stool next to me eating Cheerios, has something to contribute. “You’re not a monster,” she says, in a voice that’s half protest, half giggle.
“Ok, not a monster. I’m a prize . . . what’s the opposite of monster?”
Not missing a beat, and with complete confidence, Haven answers, “Elephant!”
“Yeah, you’re a prize elephant!” Chase adds.
“A prize elephant, mom’s a prize elephant!” They’re giddy on the idea.
“Yeah, and you have to award prizes through your trunk,” Haven chimes in, in that same directive tone thinly layered over a pool of giggles.
I make an elephant trunk with my arm and start doing my best elephantine roar, which rips off that veneer and lets the giggles spill over. “Uuah, uuah! You picked up your clothes and get a prize! You picked up your clothes and get a prize!” Peels of laughter across my children echo throughout the living room.
Those dirty clothes are still on the floor, and they may remain there until the kids move out, and it becomes truly and fully their problem.
But I am not so mad, now. I am the prize elephant, and we are laughing, and my children are beautiful, mess and all.
This is wonderful! What you are is a parent, and it sounds like you are a very good parent. Don’t let the mess get you down. Having a close relationship with your children will mean much more to them later in life than learning to pick their clothes up.