It's Not Too Late For Your Daughters

Mothers, I have an urgent request to make.

Every male roommate I have had over the years, platonic or intimate, has turned this:

Into this:

within 20 minutes of getting home.

I could take a picture of the trail of socks and underwear too, but if you've got a man in your house, you could turn your head and see them yourself. Unless you've already picked them up.

How does this happen?

I have done an extensive, albeit informal, study of this phenomenon in the past.

First up: my Ex's Mom.

"Ex's Mom, why does he leave every single box of cereal, package of cookies, carton of milk and baggie of lunch meat out on the counter? He took them out, he can't put them back? And he never throws the empty ones away. Why?"

Ex's Mom sighed. "That's my fault. With three boys, they went through a full pantry of groceries in minutes. The only way I knew when they'd finished something off was if they left the empty boxes out. And if they left the mostly empty ones out, I could get some milk for my cereal before they finished that too."

Oh.

I've asked other roommates' moms the same thing over the years. Same general answer. I have not posed the Great Question to Laughing Boy's Mom, since it's too late to change this in our house.

The daughters, interestingly enough, do not have this particular quirk. Oh, we have others, but not the half-empty boxes, bags and cartons of groceries loitering on the counters. Probably because all that tangible evidence that we girls ever ate anything as teenagers would have led directly to an ice cream binge. Or another diet. But that's a topic for another post.

Back to the point. I can understand the groceries, I really can. Actually, never having had to provision a kitchen for a battalion of teenage boys, I'm sure I can't. But here's the thing. Men don't seem to get that there's a disconnect between "helpful" mess and general mess. If a guy leaves almost empty cartons of milk out on the counter, you can guarantee he will leave spilled sugar on the floor, spattered spaghetti sauce in the microwave, used cereal bowls half full of the aforementioned milk on the coffee table, and a trail of socks and underwear down the hall, up the stairs and even out onto the back porch in the right weather.

So Mothers, here's my plea. Nip this in the bud. It's time. It's too late for me, for us. But do it for your daughters, for your someday daughters-in-law, for significant others everywhere. Future generations will thank you.

Saving the planet one empty carton of milk at a time.