Art Lessons

We have 3 bathrooms in this house. There’s a little one downstairs that stays relatively clean . . . so long as I remember to flush “just to be safe” before walking out the door every morning. And then again in the evening, maybe once or twice. Also just before bed. Ok, you get it – we have flushing issues around here.

There’s another bathroom in my room – it gets used by everyone so it’s not fair to say any mess is just me. Really.

The one upstairs is All Kids All the Time. I tend to squint as I walk past, hoping that I won’t notice if it’s messy. In our valiant attempts at chore-lists, this is invariably the least favorite job of all. Drawing it out of the hat when we set up new chore charts is quickly followed by negotiations and bartering rivaled only by open-air markets in Third World countries.

The biggest problem we have up there is toothpaste. I’ve tried everything under the sun to remedy this problem, short of doling it out myself with a Mom Only Tube, in miserly little pea-sized droplets, every night and every morning. But that seems overly controlling. And, let’s be honest, I don’t need to saddle my kids with any more control issues than we’ve already got going on over here.

I’ve given them one tiny, travel tube. I’ve given them a tube with the flip lid, a tube with the screw on lid, a tube with the thumb-pump-thingy lid, you name it, we’ve had it. I’ve tried giving everyone their own tube with their own uniquely colored toothpaste . . . thinking maybe I could at least narrow down the culprit based on color of globular evidence. No. Very misguided. That just resulted in a multi-colored, abstract_art exhibit. At least with the single travel-sized tube, they ran out of toothpaste before it got as far as the ceiling.

I’ve walked them carefully through the Getting Toothpaste on Toothbrush Process, oh, I don’t know, A MILLION TIMES. Does not compute. I’ve herded them all back in to the bathroom, just to marvel at the sink and the horrifying mess…now look, I just scoop a little water, scrub a little here, maybe over here . . . and ta da!! It’s beautiful! Shiny! Sanitary (more or less)!! But the before and after demonstration . . . they all act like they get it, they "ooo" and "ahh" at the appropriate times, but the next time they brush . . . they do not scoop, they do not scrub . . . they do not get it. It’s like I’m running a halfway house for the Toothpaste Impaired.

My friend Lori ordered some sort of a toothpaste tidy top something or other online for $20. Wow. Pricey. She hadn’t received it when I last spoke to her. I’m going to call her and see if it was worth the cash. Because I’m SO jumping on that bandwagon if it helps keep the sink clean. Otherwise, somebody is going to the halfway house, but it won’t be for toothpaste.