I appreciate a clean and tidy home, I like order and things to have a place and to be in their place. When I was younger I used to look at the Crate and Barrel Catalog and see all the artfully arranged rooms with their beautiful furniture and decor and dream of having a house like that someday (ok so maybe I still do that). I am the type of person who is bothered by the fact that doll houses don't have stairs going to the third floor or their bathrooms don't have doors. I used to spend hours each week organizing toys and putting them back into their correct places. I would move the dollhouse pieces back to the correct rooms and make sure all the little pieces were with the correct other little pieces. I would wipe down dolls and other toys that had marker on them. Each week I would say "I worked hard on cleaning your room, can you please keep it this way?" But yet there I was every week doing the same thing again, cleaning up the little pieces and wiping marker off the dolls.
In the midst of all my cleaning this past week I realized something. I might be someone who likes things in their place and order and tidiness but it doesn't mean that my daughter is that type of person. My daughter likes to create and invent. She likes to draw on her dolls and take game pieces and put them in her doll house as decorations or people. She likes to put lego pieces with Barbie dolls. She spends hours creating scenes and rooms. She looks for string and little pieces of cloth to add to beds or as curtains or dresses tied around dolls.
We have a silly little saying in our house, "share in my excitement." I might not be excited about my husband's new workout routine or about the rock my son has found but it is important that they are excited about those things. We work hard to share each other's excitement. I listen when my husband tells me about his workout because I know it is important to him. Instead of telling my son to not bring another rock, stick or piece of dirt into the house, I work hard to give value to his finding and show that I am just as excited as he is about the rock. Same thing with my daughter's cartwheel, I have watched her cartwheel about one hundred times a day for the past month but whether it is the first one of the day or the ninety-ninth I work to show excitement for her accomplishment.
Why should what she creates in her room be any different? She spends hours working in her room and there I was every week spending an hour or so tearing it all down and not giving value to what she created and not sharing in her excitement of creation. So I stopped putting things back in their exact places where I think they should go. And I stopped collecting all the little game pieces so that they all stay together. Instead, I let her put things away and I let her creations stay. Picasso said, "Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist when he grows up." I do not want to squash my daughter's creativity and be the reason that she no longer explores and creates the world around her, so I no longer clean up after her.
That does not mean we live in a house of squalor. She still has to maintain a clear floor for most of her room so no one trips and falls. I still vacuum and dust, but I leave her creations alone. It still bother's me to see her drawing on a doll or putting stickers on her dollhouse, but I am working hard to look past what I see as a mess and to see her vision and hard work and creations.
