I spent several hours in one bedroom this morning after the kids had gone to school. Two sons share this room, ages 9 and 10, and to say they treat it like a pigsty would be insulting to hogs everywhere.

I truly do not understand why they find it necessary to pull every shirt off the hangers and throw every pair of pants around the room, dumping out drawers every morning.

For the past two weeks when either one has requested computer privilege my rhetorical question has been, “Is your room clean?”

They hang their heads and walk off with me uselessly suggesting that they, at least, go pick up the trash they’ve tossed willy-nilly everywhere. It’s not so much that they’ve refused to do so, it’s more that they are overwhelmed by the monstrous mess they’ve made.

I share the feeling, but thought I could wait them out.

Not so, this morning it was too chilly for me to work outside so I thought I’d tackle that hellhole. Four 39 gallon trash bags later, six wash loads completed, and my patience shot to heck and back, the room is clean.

I had a mild hissy fit, told them both to never touch their closet, to wear what I lay out for them each day, and to get their dirty clothes to the laundry room every single day.

My bedroom is huge but not trashed up. Five minutes a day of picking up is all it takes, yet to these guys who grew up in disorder and confusion, this is their comfort zone. They don’t care if it’s ever clean and they feel slightly emotionally threatened when it looks nice.

As if I’d then go toss them out and get two new sons? What are they thinking? What makes them not be appalled by squalor? One grew up sleeping in the dirt in El Paso while the other stayed in several hundred places, dropped off everyday wherever his birth mother could find a so-called babysitter.”\

I use the term babysitter loosely as he truly was left in hundreds of places with no regard at all for his safety or wellbeing, eventually coming to me after several stints in an emergency shelter. No wonder that order and cleanliness aren’t at the top of his priority list, yet I know I must somehow change his mindset as the chaos of his room also spills over in his disorganized mind, book bag and school desk.

This is a very slow battle that I am determined to win for his own good and certainly against his better judgment.

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