Paper Watch, Day 9

[pegkerr]

Remember this entry, last year? Rob opened his birthday present in the living room, and then never picked up the wrapping paper. I finally brought it to his attention after thirteen days.

I was curious to learn how long it would be before he picked up the paper on the living room floor after unwrapping his present this year.

So far, it has been nine days.

How long do you think it will take him to notice and pick up the wrapping paper?


[Poll #877232]

Edited to add: Of course, if/when he reads this LJ entry, it won't quite work as a blind experiment. Still, I will be curious to see the poll results.

Comments

[arian1.livejournal.com]

Man you just need to go though your house smackin' people.

Whine. smacking.

More whining? More smacking.

Spousal insensitivity? Smacking.

Backtalk from the kids. Smacking.

I bet all three of them would straighten up in like...no time. :)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Maybe, although I'm not convinced.

More importantly, I don't want to become the sort of person who would do that.

[arian1.livejournal.com]

A little corrective treatment goes a long way. I'm not advocating beating people (unless they pay). But putting the old foot down, or the palm in motion does work.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

You might want to take the "broken windows" approach to your problem. This is a reference to the policy that Rudy Giuliani suggests helped turn crime in NYC around. Rather than concentrate on the big crimes, they concentrated on doing the little things; cutting down on graffiti, turnstyle jumpers, aggressive panhandling, etc. These made a noticable difference in the quality of life in the city and also ended up cascading through things to result in a reduction in murder and such in the city.

In your case, rather than try to get the whole house clean, you might try getting the family together, Rob included, and cleaning the living room. No recriminations about who made what mess or what needs doing. Just get everyone in the room for 10 minutes (set a timer), do something to make it better and then say, "There. Isn't that nice?"

Do it every day you have everyone in the house together. Do it when you're exhausted. Do it when you're cranky. Do it when you don't like each other very much. Do it when you're celebrating.

My prediction is that a few months down the road, the living room will no longer be a problem. The hope is that it will help instill habits in everyone so that they will take the cleaning/organizing to their own particular spaces.

Good luck! (I give you my Ganesh icon, for he is the remover of obstacles.)
Good luck!

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

And besides, at least one of the girls out-ranks her....

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

The cleaners at my office are notorious for ignoring the floors (they'll dust our desks, but ignore the floors -- go figure). We've tested them from time to time by putting large, obvious things on the floor -- and finally picked them up ourselves when we get tired of looking at them or tripping over them.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

In my house, my husband likes to declutter by making a pile of things he doesn't know what do to with and leaving them where I will trip over them, so that I'll make the decisions.

Trying to wait it out never, no nay never, works. I have to bring it up to him. I hate having to bring it up to him. I suspect you feel similarly about your family. (Meg is really a clutterer, too... *sigh*)

And this week seems to be the cleaning week, eh? Christmas is a-comin' and I won't let the family strew decorations from one end of the house to the other until it's CLEAN. ARRRRGH.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

She'd get into a helluva lot of trouble with sensei if she used it against me!

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be a pessimist, but if Rob is anything like Lars, it'll be never.

[naomikritzer]

We got home from our Thanksgiving travels on Sunday evening, dumped everything in the living room, and went to bed. On Monday, I had mountains of laundry, suitcases that needed to be shoved back into the storage closet, and piles of miscellaneous junk that had to be dealt with. So what did I do? I started by sorting out and decluttering the girls' art supply shelves, because they had been making me so crazy for so long. (And when I looked at the nice, neat, clutter-and-crap-free shelves, I was very happy I'd done it. It made the rest of the mess easier to deal with, having ONE corner that looked the way it was supposed to.)

I'm not going to offer any suggestions for changing Peg's spouse or children. I think that if the penalty for leaving stuff lying on the floor were actually death by impalement, and they were living with Vlad the Impaler rather than Peg and thus couldn't count on the mercy of the neatnik in the household saving them, they would still leave stuff lying on the floor. (Briefly. Until they got impaled.) So I don't see as there's really a lot Peg can do, since impalement (and floggings and dungeons full of rats) are already off the list of options.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

OH, yes... we're still working through the Thanksgiving stuff ourselves, and like you I decided NOT to do that but to clean Meg's room, which was bugging me, rather than face the mountain of laundry and suitcases and so on. And I feel so much better now that Meg's room is clean and organized, with toys back in their sets and books back on shelves. She even helped, more than usual at any rate. Her reward was that she got to put up and decorate her little tree. So her room at least is festive.

I hope I didn't come across as strident on the wait-it-out front. I didn't mean to. It's just, faced with a similar issue, I've tried the wait-it-out tactic and it only made ME more frustrated, but it didn't seem to bother my husband in the least. (Although to give him props, he does help with the decluttering and cleaning when asked.)

[redbird]

Silly thought: if it's there after, say, three months, pick it up and save it. Next year, use it to rewrap the same present you gave him this year.

Slightly less silly thought, and one likely to lead to less angst: next year, give him his present without wrapping paper. Maybe put a ribbon on it.

[bluewaterlilies.livejournal.com]

Have you asked Rob to pick up the wrapping paper? (I know, I know, you shouldn't have to ask.)

I'm still new to this marriage thing, but I've figured out that my husband is oblivious. He won't notice the sink full of dishes, but if I ask him to wash them, he generally complies cheerfully.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

"Briefly. Until they got impaled." Okay, good thing I'm reading this at home on a snow day, because if you made me laugh this hard at the office, I'd get fired.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you for making me laugh REALLY HARD.

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

Looking at the results we seem to have INFINTE faith in Rob. ;-)

[janetwain.livejournal.com]

Actually, he'll never get to. I don't think Peg can let it lie there for a full two weeks. The poll which really applies is:

How long can Peg wait before picking it up her own darned self?

What I'm really curious about is the kids . . . no one inherited the neatnik gene?

[naomikritzer]

I hope I didn't come across as strident on the wait-it-out front.

Oh, not to me. I posted my response in reply to you because I was thinking about the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas cleaning, and then thought, "I should reply to Peg, too" and glanced back over the prior posts. And, as almost always happens when she posts about the mess-in-the-house issue, there was lots of well-intended advice, and I thought, geez, if it were as simple as 'smack people' her family would've caught on by now. Hence the comment about impalement.

I feel much better when my kids' room is clean, too. They're pretty good about picking up when instructed that it's clean-up time, but over time the sorting algorithm degrades, plus bits of unsortable clutter accumulate. It requires an intensive hour or two (preferably while the kids are out of the house and not able to rescue pieces of Happy Meal toy from the trash) to get it back into shape.

[nickel234.livejournal.com]

Some of us (yes, I'M the one who's blind in our household, my hubby is always cleaning up after me) just don't notice it. But when I'm asked to help, I do it without problem. It just doesn't bother me so much.

I did like the idea of everyone cleaning the living room together though - that might work. My hubby used to have to do EVERYTHING, then he went to Alaska for 10 days and I realized how much he was doing on his own and now I'm doing MUCH more. In fact, today he accused me of hitting my head and acting strange because I've cleaned so much today.

Anyway, just trying to show you there could be hope, but it usually does start with asking for help first.

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

If it was me, I'd just napalm it. I don't hold no truck with that sort of passive agressive stuff. If it is a problem, comment. No problem don't comment. But I can never see any value in someone trying to take the moral high ground on the 'my level of clean' is better than 'your level of clean'. IMHO of course. And of course I'm a clean first ask questions later type.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

It doesn't count as passive-aggressive when everybody for a five km radius already knows exactly how you feel but has decided that they don't have do anything about it unless you get so angry your neck tendons show.

It counts as "refusing to keep being the person in charge of esoteric knowledge such as 'ripped paper does not belong on the livingroom floor'"

[castiron.livejournal.com]

I admit to some curiosity as to what would happen if you handed him his present and set a wastebasket in front of him at the same time ;-).

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I'll definitely have to try that next year!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

There just has to be a better way to deal with this problem than a battle of passive-aggressive wills.

B

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

What exactly is this experiment supposed to prove? That Rob doesn't see (or perhaps care about) clutter/litter/mess? You already know he doesn't.

(For this particular instance, I find it a bit odd--as I did last year--that someone is expected to clean up the wrappings from their birthday presents. I consider cleaning up from someone else's celebration to be part of their getting to have a celebration.)

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

wisdom flows like the clearest waterfall.