Take a look back before you close the door
Our four children shared one bathroom all their growing-up years. For my loft-dwelling city friends, a two-bathroom house may sound like a luxury. (It should have felt that way to me, since we didn’t even have one bathroom in our house until I was ten years old.) But I quickly joined the children in being annoyed at the turf wars of a shared bathroom.
Nothing starts the day worse than stepping on another person’s soggy towel. Except maybe their glob of toothpaste on the sink or their dirty clothes dropped in a straight line from the door to the shower. After listening to complaints for a few weeks, I finally hit upon a solution. Or maybe it was their father’s idea. I don’t really remember. I just remember we established a new rule in our house:
Everyone walks out of the bathroom backwards.
The change was amazing. Suddenly everyone could see their own mess, which generally translated to cleaning it up. Eventually, we all discovered the pleasure of walking out of a clean room and seeing that we’d done our part for family harmony and world peace.
The principle works well for life in general. Walking backwards out of a day, a season, or a simple conversation brings great perspective. Sometimes it is good to just pause, look back, and survey the scene for damage before moving on. And, sometimes, what we see is a glistening sink, a spotless floor, and a perky vase of flowers on the shelf.
I hope you have that kind of a week.
This is simply brilliant. 🙂
I remembered this story just the other day, and I thought, “I gotta start teaching the girls that.” 🙂
Oh my gosh. EVERY day I walk out of my office backwards. I stand there and look inside – with the light off, though, and admittedly dim lighting helps things out. And of course I do it at the house, which drives Michael crazy. I always forget I’m going to do it and end up missing the butt-in-seat time he ordered. 😉
And I forgot to add that I totally aha’d when it got to the punchline where you said we should do this for the days and seasons too. BRIL.
Brilliant! I am going to implement this in the Peavler household!! I hope have lots more posts like this to share! I need all the help I can get!
I’m thinking that the fact that I do not remember this rule AT ALL, may be the reason my housekeeping skills are so extremely lacking. Where was I?
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Don’t your remember, Little-Miss-Leave-a-Trail? You were getting away with murder because you were the baby. At least that’s what your siblings say.