Cleanliness and Godliness

Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
John Wesley

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, well my daughter is very Godly. Actually, I don't think that Godly is a word, but that's beside the point. My daughter is a neat freak. I don't know where these genetics come from, but they are definitely not mine. They must have come from my husband's side somewhere.

Please don't get the wrong impression; we are not total slobs. We keep our dishes and laundry washed and our house picked up. But, really, how many 18 month olds do you know that like everything to be neat and tidy? My daughter likes to clean. She keeps her little kitchen clean. She had managed to spill chocolate milk all over one side of it, and we had to clean that up. Unfortunately, I didn't know she had done that until about 12 hours later. Glad I found it then. The smell would have gotten much worse. Of course, she spilled it on the side with the "cutting board." It's got a cute little woodgrain look (lots of cracks and crevices for chocolate milk to get into and dry in a sticky mess). Where was this going? Oh, yeah. We had to clean it up before it got any worse. I got out the orange cleaner and started spraying it down. Then I started wiping it off with a paper towel. She pulled a paper towel off the roll (picture the paper towel roll rolling across the floor as she rips the first sheet on the roll in half to get it off) to help. But those paper towels couldn't be left out on the floor. They absolutely had to be picked up. Right away. Before we could do anything else.

That done, she moved on to helping clean her kitchen. She "scrubbed" out the sink and part of the door. Then she decided to do some cooking. Even my neat freak can get distracted, she is after all only 18 months old. She made macaroni and cheese. She took the tongs from the kitchen and was "feeding" me the macaroni and cheese while I finished cleaning her kitchen. I say "feeding" because most of the time she starts off getting the end of the tongs near my mouth. Then she puts them back in the pan. Then they don't get as close to my mouth. Then she starts giggling and moving the makeshift spoon back and forth to the pan in double time. Does this sound like an eye-gouging incident waiting to happen?

She feels the need to pick up after her parents. If we are watching a movie on a Saturday afternoon while she is napping, the first thing that she does when she wakes up is pick up our popcorn bowl and hand it to us to put in the sink. She doesn't like for there to be anything on the floor. Getting a glass of water? Drop some ice on the floor? She will pick it up for you. If this keeps up, I'm going to have the only teenager who picks up her room and does her own laundry.