Let's take a tour of all the stuff around my house that has been left on the floor for someone else to clean up

I just spent three minutes walking around my house taking pictures of items that have been left on the floor by my family, apparently in the confident expectation that someone else will come along, pick them up, and put them back in their rightful place.

As you might expect, this is just a fraction of the mess that is our home. The full scope of the slobishness would be too depressing to chronicle.

Here we go! Let's start in the living room:

So what do we have here? Looks like a pillow from the couch, a blanket that should have been folded up and put back into the closet, and a lonely little cup that's thankfully empty and not spilling its contents onto the floor. That's probably the only mess in the living room, right? Hahahaha! You're funny.

A few feet away is this open box of cereal and a coffee mug, both of which have probably been there since last night because, you know, why put them away when you'll probably use them again?

And oh, look at this in front of the chair! It's a bunch of Xbox controllers and headphones. Because, again, I'm sure someone in our family whose name rhymes with Herod will be playing Xbox again sometime soon, so it's just more convenient to leave everything out so he can pick right up where he left off!

This is our cat Bert catching some sun rays by the window. It's OK that he's on the floor. I just think it's funny when, on a relatively warm day, an already-fat-and-fluffy cat feels the need to lay in the sun. Since we're by the stairs, let's move to the second floor and see what's going on up there...

The fun begins right at the top of the stairs. I'm not even sure what the situation is here, other than that there appears to be an abandoned clock radio and a sponge. You guys, I can't even...I just...sigh.

Nearby is...a curtain rod holding what I think is referred to as a "valance." Is that right? In any case, while I may not be the world's leading home improvement expert, I'm pretty sure a valance doesn't belong on the floor.

Near the stairs we find, I don't know, more stuff that shouldn't be there. Why doesn't the person to whom these items belong come and pick it all up? I realize that would be an act of unselfishness unparalleled in our family annals, so perhaps I'm asking too much.

This is the only picture I'm going to show you from the room in which two of my daughters live, because we could do a long series of these posts just in that area alone. Of all the many things on the floor in there, this pile of used tissues is my favorite. If you have a cold and need to blow your nose in the night, throwing tissues on the floor near your bed is fine. But when you get up in the morning, is it a great hardship to dispose of those tissues? (NOTE: This was taken around 4 in the afternoon, so even if these were just used last night, I in my slave driver fashion am thinking they should have been thrown away by now.) I need to get out of this room. In fact, I need to go back downstairs...

...to the kitchen! It's actually not too bad in here (today). But I did notice these headphones just sort of laying on the floor under the kitchen table. How and why does that happen? On second thought, don't answer that. Let's visit the basement.

At the bottom of the basement stairs is all of this. A nice mixture of winter and summer apparel, with a little kid's tray (the kind you attach to a table, I think) thrown in for extra special measure. And I think that's one of the kid's pool passes, as well. And we just got down here!

OK, this one is my bad. In the back room of the basement is this lonely dumbbell, just sitting all by itself instead of laying next to its compatriots in the little nook where the weights are kept. I don't even lift weights regularly, but somehow I managed to leave it out. Sorry about that.

There's all kinds of stuff clogging the floor of the front room of the basement, but in Terry's defense, it's because she's valiantly trying to clean that area. I just wanted to point out this red soccer sock next to the treadmill. Having five kids who all play soccer or have played soccer in the past, there are a LOT of soccer socks around our house. And shin guards. And jerseys. And shorts. And soccer balls. And cleats. And...you get the point. I'm just always amazed at how, even during the off-season, these soccer socks continue to clutter up the house.


OK, you know what? That's all we're going to do. Like I said, there's a lot more, but I can only do this for so long. One day when the kids are all moved out, I'm going to do a version of this post in which I take photos showing NO items left out on the floor. I'll be sad the offspring are gone, but having such a clean house is going to be awesome.

I can't even imagine it.