In order to strive to declutter I have been going through boxes in the attic. One of the boxes I found was my school work from high school. I think I threw out (or have on floppy disk somewhere) my work from college. I don't know where my elementary work is, although I'd love to see my story notebook. But my high school stuff was pretty amusing.
One of the pieces of writing I found was a description of my room in 10th grade. I wrote it in the form of a detective report, and the assignment was to do some sort of descriptive writing. I was handing lots of things over to Eleanor to read, so I gave her this one.
And now I'm not sure it was a good idea. I was not a neat child. I have improved, thanks to maturity, guilt, and having 3 small people around who make even bigger messes than I could. But in high school... Eleanor's response was to tell me, "Now I never have to clean my room again! You were messier than I am!"
I think my idea was that I could show her that I could identify with her pain when I asked her to clean up, and that she shouldn't be embarrassed by anything in her room that I might see: I was worse. er impression was that I set the bar lower and she could slide in just above that bar.
The ultimate goal is not to have Eleanor's room perfectly clean, but when she decides to keep it clean (because of roommates, or maturity, or guilt, or trying to impress someone) she has the tools to do it. In other words, she still needs to clean her room.
One of the pieces of writing I found was a description of my room in 10th grade. I wrote it in the form of a detective report, and the assignment was to do some sort of descriptive writing. I was handing lots of things over to Eleanor to read, so I gave her this one.
And now I'm not sure it was a good idea. I was not a neat child. I have improved, thanks to maturity, guilt, and having 3 small people around who make even bigger messes than I could. But in high school... Eleanor's response was to tell me, "Now I never have to clean my room again! You were messier than I am!"
I think my idea was that I could show her that I could identify with her pain when I asked her to clean up, and that she shouldn't be embarrassed by anything in her room that I might see: I was worse. er impression was that I set the bar lower and she could slide in just above that bar.
The ultimate goal is not to have Eleanor's room perfectly clean, but when she decides to keep it clean (because of roommates, or maturity, or guilt, or trying to impress someone) she has the tools to do it. In other words, she still needs to clean her room.
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