Flamethrower Or Gas Mask: Cleaning Options For Teenager Rooms

When it comes to living in the same house as a teenager, you first need to come to a decision about his room.

Will you use a flamethrower or a gas mask?

By which I mean that you can choose either to undertake the massive clean-out and disinfection that sheltering a teenager forces on a room, or you can simply slip on a gas mask whenever you walk near the room and politely ignore the visible stank wafting out from under the closed door.

But wait, dude, I hear some of you newer readers asking? That can't be all the options, you noobs say. What about teens who keep their rooms clea–

Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!

Sorry. I couldn't even type that and keep a straight face. Hold on a second. Need to wipe the laughtears from my eyes.

Woooo!

Okay. All better now.

No, noob, you won't have to worry about a teenager keeping her room clean. That just doesn't happen. If you think you know of a teenager's room that is actually clean, then either the spawn is lying about her age, or he's lying about the condition of the room. Teenagers are inherently messy. It's in their DNA.

You were a messy teenager. Your spouse was a messy teenager. Are you at all surprised that you're rearing a crop of messy teenagers under your room right now?

I'm not surprised. You shouldn't be either.

So that's a given. Your teen's room will be messy. The question is: What are you going to do about it?

There really are two ways for you stay-at-home dudes to deal with the messy teen room.

The first way is guaranteed to drive you and your teen completely bonkers. But it is satisfying to a certain segment of the crowd. I'm talking about those dudes who decide that their teenager will have a clean room. Or else.

These are the dudes who need to break out the flamethrowers and just burn everything in the room to ashes. They're much easier to clean. You just get an industrial vacuum cleaner and start sucking up the ashy mess. Either that or take off and bomb the room from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

You and your teen will fight about this. Mostly because we parents like for our spawn to do the work when we tell them to do it. So we're going to be yelling and screaming and picking up crusty bread that's been growing under a shirt so new it still has the tag on it and they're going to scream about how, "It's not fair. There's no reason I should have to put away my clothes? I want a good reason. That's not a good reason!"

I know this from experience, as I'm only now recovering from trying to force Hyper Lad to put away his clothes and generally do something about the horrifying mess he calls a room. I'm keen to find out if there's still carpet under there and, if there is, can it be salvaged when he leaves?

We did the yelling and screaming thing. And did it well, I might add. If by well you mean anger and threats and recriminations and slammed doors and car keys taken away. . . Then, yeah, we did it well.

The thing is, though, I finally realized this was a waste of time. He wasn't going to clean his room. Even if he cared enough to do it, we'd been at loggerheads for so long now, he'd stop himself from picking up just out of spite.

And so I stepped back, took a small breath because I didn't want anything growing from that room to get deeply in my lungs, and gave in.

Growing up, I remember my mom's theory that if my door was closed, then my room didn't actually exist. If it didn't exist, she didn't have to yell at me about keeping it clean.

That closed door led to a lot less fighting and screaming. For the most part. I mean, sometimes I would accidentally leave my door open because there wasn't enough room to close it and that didn't go over well. But, for the most part, we got along by pretending that my room didn't exist once I closed the door.

That's the gas mask approach. Wear something so you don't notice the stink and so you have crappy peripheral vision and won't accidentally see into the spawn's hellpit he calls a room.

The way I figure it, Hyper Lad will eventually start picking up his room on his own. Mostly when he starts getting serious about girls and wants to be able to wear something nice that doesn't look like it will get up and walk away on its own the minute his back is turned. It's what happened with me, after all.

I mean, I didn't suddenly turn into a neat freak. That, according to three different spawn, only happened when I decided it was time to start being cruel to my children for no reason at all. I mean, it's not like the clothes are going to stay clean, right? So why worry about them?

The choice, as I see it, happens because you need to understand when to fight, which battles are worth your time. By that I mean that you could get your spawn to clean his room, but, after hours of anger and screaming and resentfulness, is a room that's clean for a day or two at most really worth the emotional cost?

I don't think so. I've come to realize that, as long as his mess stays where I don't have to see it, it doesn't do anything any permanent damage and I can just let it go.

Which doesn't keep me from twitching like a hummingbird on double espressos whenever I walk past his bulging door, but I think we're getting there.

Finally, after all these years, I'm learning something my mom knew from the start.

Dads. We might not be the brightest bulbs, but we do shine. On occasion. For a while. Under the right conditions.