Monday is “clean the bathrooms” day. It is also laundry day. Anyone who has lived with a boy of any age knows that cleaning the bathrooms can be terrifying, and cleaning the bathroom of two little boys with poor concentration and aiming skills can be nightmarish. Over the course of the past year, however, I’ve come up with the perfect solution – my boys clean their own bathroom. Yes, the entire thing. Yes, all by themselves. It’s fantastic.

I started with Captain Flail, who was five years old and very eager to help and please. He learned to scrub the tub (I apply all the chemicals myself, of course. I’m not insane.) with only a few minor hold-ups. I mean, how hard is it to scrub a tub? “Scrub until all the powder is bubbles,” I told him blithely. Little did I know that he was lost on the meaning of the word “scrub.” Reluctant to complain and refusing to give up, he dragged his finger through the powder; he blew on the powder (his eyes were mercifully closed); he pounded the powder with his fist; he took off his socks and saturated them in powder. Where this last idea came from, I have no idea. Meanwhile I was industriously doing the rest of the bathroom and didn’t notice until 40 minutes had passed that he hadn’t actually touched the scrub brush. While I taught him the meaning of the word “scrub,” it occurred to me: this hyper-active, spastic, easily bored child had been working for 40 minutes. All by himself. This was a power I couldn’t wait to harness.

When carefully instructed, the Flail evolved into a fantastic worker. He moved from tub scrubbing to toilet scrubbing to floor scrubbing very quickly. I even awarded him his very own little bottle of 100 parts water 1 part Pine Sol, so he could spray and wipe the way that I do with my 409. By the time he graduated Kindergarten this spring, he could do the entire bathroom with absolutely no input from me except the sprinkling of powder, spraying of 409, and occasional praise.

His brother, Mr. Mimic, posed a bit more of a challenge. Trying to forestall any trouble, I taught him what the word “scrub” means right away, but he took me a bit too literally. That poor little child is cursed with the burden of perfectionism. Before I knew it he was trying to scrub the enamel off of the tile because it was slightly chipped (he saw it as a spot of dirt) and hysterically screaming “OH SPOT! GET OFF SPOT! OH WHY, SPOT!? WHYYYYY?!” (I am not making this up.) When I suggested that he just move on to a new place, he completely dissolved into tears. And for my darling blondie, tears involve trying to kick and strangle me. Needless to say, it wasn’t a shining success. But over time he learned to take my advice and move on when there was a stubborn spot (he’s tried to scrub everything off the wall from an earwig (very easily dislodged) to a spot of sunlight (very difficult. But later that day it was gone, so he felt great about himself.)

Today I was sorting and washing laundry when I realized that I had been hearing the industrious sound of scrubbing and wiping for well over an hour coming from the boys’ bathroom. Mr. Mimic was working all alone. He scrubbed and rinsed the tub, scrubbed and rinsed the bathroom sink, scrubbed the toilet bowl, wiped the toilet down with paper towels, took the garbage out, got a new garbage bag and put it in the can, scrubbed the floor, and wiped down the floor with a cloth. (I had sprayed my 409 and sprinkled my powder, but that’s as far as I had gotten.) He actually got upset with me for coming in and trying to clean the mirror. So he ended up doing that, too. The bathroom is clean and in his words, “so shiny! So very shiny!”

He is three years old.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.