Adventures in Babysitting

Brief update on the developments in tolerating my ickle freshman roommates:

After being repeatedly ignored when i asked the girlies to wash my frickin' dishes when they use them, i realized my system of "treat them like grown-ups" wasn't working. so i tried a new tactic.

I made little signs.

Every pre-school teacher knows that if you put rules like "use your inside voice" and "share!" on the walls in large, friendly letters, perhaps even with a little graphic of a bear and an octopus passing a toy train between them, it means its law. It stands as a constant reminder of what expected behavior is, and can serve as a specific reminder if you put a child in time-out directly under said sign. I've taken Teacher Cadets and Driver's Ed--i know the power of signs.

So i wrote out a sign in large, friendly letters which read "Failure to Promptly Wash Kristen's Dishes will Result in Your Prevention from their Use." A bit wordy, i'll admit, but it looks more polite than "NO WASH=NO USE."

Now let me interject something important here--I own 90% of the dishes in this house. Plates, cups, utensils, pots, pans, cutting boards, measuring spoons, collanders--i got it all. i even have a squeezy metal tea infuser and plastic chopsticks. I own the kitchen scissors and the oven mitt. I also keep the place stocked with sponges and paper towels and even have refrigerator storage containers if anyone wants to use them. I offered to share my bountiful store of kitchen goodness with the girls on the one condition "that you wash the dishes as soon as possible when you're done using them."

My dishes sat for a week before the cute little sign arrived.

The cute little sign hung for a good eight hours before Somebody's grubby little paws tore it from the cabinet.

And tore it to shreds.

Little shreds.

I think somebody took it personally. This amuses me to no end--how better to react to my calling you out for behaving like a child...than to Behave Like A Child? "Oh Kristen is such a bitch accusing me of never washing her dishes damn tyrant thinks she runs the place putting up condescending notes all over the place..." while my dishes, that i didn't use, sit filthily in the sink.

by the time i got home from class the dishes had been washed, though.

I really hope now that the kiddies will stop using my dishes entirely--to spite me. I don't mind if they curse me, call me a slave driver, convince themselves i'm making them clean up after me somehow, so long as they don't leave my stuff a mess.

I just really don't want to have to store my dishes under my bed--my one grown-up roommate takes individual responsibility and washes them, and i'd hate to keep her from them. And its inconvenient for me to crawl under there (we don't have any other storage in the rooms, and i gave my head a good thwack with my bedframe just yesterday going under there for a tube of deodorant.) But if i have to go another day unable to find a spoon to eat my cereal with because all ten of them are dirty i may just have to.

Damn Kids.