No, the title does NOT refer to the participants of "Toddlers & Tiaras", although it certainly COULD. No, friends, the title refers to my adventures yesterday in my daughter's room. My darling daughter, Chloe Skye, is a Door Dropper. What's a Door Dropper, you ask? A Door Dropper is a child who, when told, "Go put this away" about any object, will take said object to whichever room it belongs, and DROP IT RIGHT IN THE DOOR!
When I tell her, "If you don't go put these stuffed animals away, I'm throwing them out!", a short time later, I will find those very animals abandoned in the doorway of the playroom. If I tell her to go put away some laundry -- laundry which I have just finished washing, drying and folding, mind you -- the next time I go upstairs, I will see that same laundry lying haphazardly in the doorway of her room. Are you starting to get the picture?
A few months ago, we brought home some sixty-plus books from the school district's book swap. Most of the books were in an old Dole banana box. And by "old", I mean this box was in no way capable of successfully holding about forty books. And yet, that's exactly what we did. Needless to say, by the time we got home, the box situation was getting pretty precarious. By the time Chloe had gone through the books again, it was even worse. So when she decided to bring the box in from the playroom a few weeks ago, things were getting seriously unstable. Naturally, I said, "Chloe, do NOT leave that ratty box in the middle of my living room!"
I fully expected her to drag the box back to the playroom. Silly me. The next time I went upstairs, there was that box of books in the doorway of her room. Except it was no longer a box. It was now a random pile of books, surrounded by the remnants of the cardboard box, which had clearly given up. Do you know what happens when you have a pile of books in a doorway? Those books begin to migrate. Some migrate into the hall, others migrate further into the room, still others migrate under the bed, thereby blocking the trundle bed from being properly stowed beneath the other bed.
Furthermore, the books cause other things to migrate, as well. With the books staunchly guarding the doorway, nothing else can get more than a few feet into the room. And nothing can get out of the room, either. No dirty laundry, no items of clothing that have been outgrown and should be tossed in the "donate" bag, no trash, no empty Guinea pig food bags, NOTHING! It all stays, and the majority of it stays right in the doorway, like some hideous highway accident in which no vehicles can pass in either direction, and from which, you simply cannot look away!
So yesterday, I braved the horror of the doorway, and waded into the abyss that was Chloe's room. I found four water bottles, two cups, three spoons (but no bowls, go figure), two cook books (I guess they go with the spoons), enough doll clothes to wardrobe several American Girls, clothing that Chloe, herself, hasn't worn in who knows how long, enough blankets, throws, quilts and comforters to keep the population of Siberia warm in January, three of the pairs of shorts I told Chloe were long enough to take to camp (so why did I have to buy several new pairs?), and TRASH! Oh, I'm sure some of it wasn't trash to her, but she's at camp, so she'll never know I filled three trash bags worth of random stuff in her room. That will be our little secret, okay?
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