Operation Tidykleen

Since Project: Dinner is cooking along so well (pun intended) in spite of the slop we've had to eat over the past week, I decided to add something else to our family roster. I call it Operation Tidykleen.

Operation Tidykleen is very simple. We started on Saturday, when the girls and I spent ninety precious minutes cleaning the downstairs rooms. You'd think they wouldn't be that bad, since we just did our spring cleaning six weeks ago, but guess what? Dirt! Filth! Grime!

I am at war against these things.

So anyway, Operation Tidykleen has continued on in this manner: Three or four times a day, I look around the house and see people's belongings -- schoolbooks, articles of clothing, hair do-dads, shoes and the occasional stuffed dog or MP3 player -- strewn about. I then commence screaming at them like a shrew until they pick everything up, hustle it upstairs, and shove it under a bed or in a closet.

We'll see how this works. Usually, I get tired of screaming at everyone fairly quickly. But strangely enough, Meelyn and Aisling never seem to tire of leaving their crap all over the house so that I can either trip over it, sit on it, or have it fall on my head.

By acting like a heinous witch, I have so far managed to keep a completely uncluttered house for the past four days. It works for me.