Monday, February 8, 2010

The House that Had Enough-making children clean freaks

My favorite book as a child was "The House that had Enough". Basically this book is about a little girl who owns her own house (impressive) and does not do a very good job of keeping it clean. So one day the house gets really frusterated and leaves. The pillows have creepy little eyes and leave, the fridge grows arms and leaves, the soap is ticked because he is all dried out so he leaves, and the fork and the knife run away holding hands. Then, in the climax of the book, the house itself grwos giant legs and gets up and leaves while chastising the little girl about her lack of cleanliness. The little girl is very sad (and homeless) and decideds to try and get the house back. She finds the house and promises to clean and keep everything if the house comes back. In a touching moment the house comes back and the little girl spends the WHOLE day cleaning and falls asleep with her creepy eyed pillow from utter exhaustion.
My husband and I reread the "House that had Enough" over christmas break and he was DYING laughing. He is convinced that this book was my Mom conditioning me to be a clean freak. It is true that my awesome Mom is slightly OBSESSED with cleaning. She literally grounded my sister once for not making her bed before 5 am seminary (she feels really bad about this now) and we had to make a family rule of no vaccuming before 5 am because not only does she love to clean, she loves to wake up ridiculously early.
The slightly scary part is I think it worked. I am obessed with cleaning. I hate when our apartment gets dirty, I hate when their are dishes in the sink, and once I get started cleaning I can't stop till the whole place is done. I think I might have this fear that if I don't clean constantly, my pillow will grow creepy eyes and the forks and knifes will run away holding hands!

2 comments:

  1. SO FUNNY! I love that you can draw this parellel. And if you ever get the urge to clean, please come over! I've got a whole house you could work on (that is...if it hasn't walked away at that point! :)

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  2. I laughed so hard when you shared this in class. This is so funny! Who knew that a book could be used to condition somebody?!?

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