Raiders of the Lost Underwear ~ July 14, 1994

David Heiller

Mollie’s room wasn’t pretty. Three friends had just left from a sleep-over. Clothes and books and toys lay everywhere. Everywhere except where they should be.

It was time, I decided, to Clean The Room.

If the room is too messy for Monopoly, that is
not a problem, just go to the living room.

Clean The Room time is capitalized because it is like an adventure movie. You never know what you’ll find: the Ark of the Covenant, a few mummies.

There’s no one place to start when you clean a room like Mollie’s. You could almost grab a grain shovel and start digging. We began at The Bookshelf, one of many main characters in this movie. It was sagging with books and barrettes and other odds and ends that people set there late at night when they are too tired to put them where they belong.

We made a pile of Noah’s books, a pile Mollie wanted to keep, a pile she wanted to give to cousin Grace, even a pile for Mrs. Ribich, her teacher from last year (yes, we found two school books). These piles were then taken to their new destinations.

Then it was The Cupboards. Their doors haven’t been opened in several months, thanks to the doll houses and chairs piled against them. In the cupboard there were bins and buckets that were supposed to hold all the things on the floor. A bin for cooking utensils and pretend food like plastic eggs (fried and scrambled!). A basket of agates.

There was the Barbie bucket, full of voluptuous dolls, and a basket for her Kirsten doll. Mollie picked a bare-chested Barbie off the floor. “Remember when Nate played with this one?” she said with a laugh. It had teeth marks on its most prominent parts, where a dog had gnawed. Or maybe Nate had done that.

There were writing utensils, two baskets’ worth. Mollie can never find a pencil. Now I know why. They are all in her cupboard. There must have been 50 pencils, 30 markers, and 500 crayons. She could start an office supply store.

Grandma and The Doll House.
You can't see all the little tiny pieces, 
ah yes, but you will FEEL them if you step on them.

There was the bin for doll house pieces. Little vases and flowers, beds and dressers, rugs and picture frames, even a little toilet. All under two inches tall, and all very dangerous. Try stepping on one in the middle of the night.

Finally we had a bin for everything, including the odds and ends basket. If it doesn’t go in any of the others, toss it in that one. That’s when the cleaning got fun. Everything on the floor had a destination. All the hiding places were discovered. A cardboard Avon box, a shoebox, the basket of stuffed animals. All were emptied and sorted of their old undies and stinky socks and tiny toilets.

It took about an hour and a half to do all this, and yes, it was fun. Fun finding a place for everything. Fun talking to my daughter, and hearing her say how much she appreciated my help. Like the next morning, when she was playing with her re-discovered dolls. “Thanks to you I’ve found most of my things, except for some of Kirsten’s dresses,” she said. “I can look for them later.”

It was fun seeing the floor of her room again, and not worrying about tip-toeing through it like a mine field. Fun vacuuming up all those sesame seeds that leaked out of the frog that Grandma Heiller made.

Unfortunately the vacuum cleaner didn’t work, which I didn’t discover until I was half done vacuuming. That explained why all those sesame seeds were still there.

I’ll clean it later. Like Mollie said, there’s always a “later” when you clean a room.