Au Pair Lessons: Not Everyone Is As Neat As You

Maybe you dealt with this same issue when you went to university and had to share a room or a flat with a roommate. The two of you got along fairly well and things were going great, but then you realized something: they left their stuff everywhere.

My years at Loyalist were a lot like that. Where dishes piled up in the sink and people couldn’t take their slippers back to their room or clean the table of their notebooks and textbooks. The first year was definitely made worse by the fact that there were six of us girls crammed into one apartment and finding space just wasn’t possible.

I take after my dad. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’ is definitely a way of life for the two of us. Sure, sometimes things aren’t always where they’re supposed to be, but they do get there eventually. If there’s not space? Then obviously it’s time to go through and get rid of things.

However, I learned that it’s not just young adults their first years out of the proverbial nest that have issues with cleaning. For some people, it’s just not their thing. Which means that, some days, walking into the kitchen requires me to take a deep breathe and calmly close cupboard doors and put the tops back on jam jars and unload the clean dishes before putting the dirty ones in. It means that, sometimes entering the bathroom means I have to close my eyes and count to ten before hair is pulled out of the shower and towels are hung up, toothbrushes pulled out of the sink and toothpaste put back in its place. That entering the laundry room means I resiliently hang wet clothes and fold dry ones and estimate if I have enough line space to do an extra load.

It also means that, sometimes, I just leave things. That I have learned how to enter into a room and just do my best to ignore the mess and make myself a cup of tea or brush my teeth and just ignore it. It’s a lesson in patience as I tell the kids that yes, they do have to clean their mess and that yes, I understand that maybe they didn’t play with all of it but it will go by more quickly if everyone helps out.

(That’s when I also realize just how much I’m starting to not just look like my mother but oh boy, do I ever sound like her as well.)

Things I’m Loving:

+ These ideas – (52 ideas to save on travel. That’s quite a few.)

+ These photographs – (Because they’re awe inspiring.)

+ These tips – (Because painted radiators are cool.)

+ And these tips – (For blogging.)