bad housekeeping hints

~Piles of returned school work should be put on the sideboard. Not the dining room table. That's reserved for junk mail that needs to be shredded (such as credit card offers) and sections of the newspaper that look too interesting to be recycled.

~Rejection letters should be kept in their own special pile. If you don't mind marks on your table, you could drive a wooden stake through those rejections.

~For a nice decorative touch, try mirror writing in the dust on the piano. Or, if you can't manage to be a Da Vinci, at least go for backwards. "em hsaw" Much more interesting than the standard "wash me"

~IF you get reversible rugs for the bathroom floor, turning them over makes for twice as much use and a pleasant surprise. The rug is white! not grey after all.

~The ratty teeshirts you don't throw out because you figure you could use them for dust rags will make their way back to the regular clothes pile surprisingly quickly unless you push them deep into the closet where the "to be dry-cleaned" clothes live.

~If you can see yourself in the mirror hanging above your dresser, you're not trying hard enough. However it's probably best to use clean clothes to clutter the dresser-top. The dirty stuff belongs on the floor in the vicinity of the laundry basket.

~If I disappear without a trace, look for my remains in the laundry pile near one of the boys' baskets. I think I just saw it move.