Teaching My Kids

Growing up, my mother was all about instilling the virtues of responsibility and order into my young, chaotic life. If you ever met her, you’d understand—she was the queen of clean, the commander of clutter control, and the sultan of scrubbing. There wasn’t a spot in the house that could escape her meticulous inspection, and she made sure I knew how to tidy up after myself from the get-go. Honestly, I think my first baby steps were more like a baby mopping sesh.

Fast forward 30 years, and here I am—a clean freak with a penchant for making everything in my home sparkle like a disco ball, raising three girls who range from adorable to teenage rolling eyes. They’re 5, 13, and 15—somewhere between cute and ready to sue me for embarrassment. In other words, my hands are full.

But even with a household as hectic as ours, I’m determined to make sure my girls don’t grow up to be walking tornadoes. I’ve started a tradition that my mother would be proud of, a weekly cleaning day. Oh, yeah, you heard that right. Picture the scene: four females, armed with mops and vacuum cleaners, tearing through the house like the ultimate cleaning SWAT team. The energy and teamwork are awe-inspiring—or at least they would be if the youngest didn’t use her dust cloth as a cape and run around pretending to be a superhero.

My 15-year-old can clean like nobody’s business when she’s not sulking about it, and the 13-year-old? Well, she’s got a knack for organizing things into places I never knew existed. And the 5-year-old? Let’s just say her enthusiasm makes up for the fact that she’s basically just smearing around the dirt.

The best part of all this isn’t just the immaculate house at the end of the day—okay, that’s definitely a highlight. But really, it’s seeing my girls learn the value of taking care of their space and their belongings. Not to mention, it’s character-building and all that jazz.

I know deep down they might not appreciate my cleaning standards just yet, especially when I start going on about how to properly fold a towel, but I’m hoping one day it will all click for them. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll realize how helpful it is to know how to maintain a clean and orderly environment.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my time with them, even if it means dealing with some eye rolls and huffs of exasperation. After all, one day they might look back on these moments and realize they weren’t just learning to clean, they were learning to be responsible. And maybe even have a laugh or two about how their mother was obsessed with cleaning.