Marlo Thomas Was Right

We have been cleaning. Seriously cleaning. Carloads to Goodwill and extra-large trash bags piled up in the garage cleaning. We do not do this often.

S has cleaned the basement, the kitchen, and his side of the bedroom. I have cleaned the attic, the toy cabinet, and my side of the bedroom. S is in the middle of the dining room, and I have puttered around the living room, but they weren't so bad to begin with. The girls' rooms are ok too, especially because enormous amounts of baby doll and American Girl doll paraphernalia have recently been stowed in recently purchased plastic bins, themselves part of the cleaning project.

The office, however, is another story. The office is the last straw, the sticking point, the Rubicon, and a black hole, all rolled into one. The office is about seven by twelve feet and contains three doors, one window, two file cabinets, three wall cabinets, a rolling cabinet, two sets of wire shelves, a desk, a computer, all the games, all the art supplies, all the projects, the guitar books, and everything else we shove in there because it is such a pit that what difference could an enormous inflatable duck make?

I'd tried, I'd really tried. I'd cleaned out the little set of shelves on the desk where I keep bills that need to be paid and pieces of papers that need to be dealt with. I dealt with the pieces of paper. I looked around a lot. I sighed a lot. I left the room a lot.

Then last night, as we were putting the girls to bed, I said to S, "Let's just do it. Let's pour ourselves enormous drinks, go in there together, spend 45 minutes on it, and see what we can accomplish." And we did it. Stumbling over each other and the giant trash bags, we sorted the game pieces, got rid of the crumbling fingerpainted masterpieces, put the markers in containers, got rid of the orphan toy pieces, organized the box of paints, and got rid of a lot more stuff. Now, instead of looking like the metaphorical manifestation of our tortured family life, it looks like a nice little room where a nice family keeps their nicely-organized games, art supplies, projects, and computer.

What does Marlo Thomas have to do with this? Remember Free To Be You and Me? Remember Carol Channing's nasal whine?

Little boys, little girls,
When you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To be sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it TOGETHER.

With a big glass of vodka right beside you.