How to Tug at a Mother's Heartstrings

Zachary has an obsession. He is obsessed with changing outfits to suit what he's doing. If he's watching a Star Wars movie he will disappear to his bedroom and return dressed as a Jedi. If he's playing cowboys he'll disappear and re-appear fully clad in stetson and cowboy boots. If he's playing Davy Crockett he will re-appear in a racoon hat and different clothes.

The problem with this is when you visit his bedroom.

He has no concept of organizing laundry.

Clean clothes are mixed with dirty clothes and are strewn all over the room and hanging out of drawers. As a result we end up washing clean clothes over and over without ever really knowing if they were dirty or not. This is a real source of frustration for me. I'm a busy Mum; I work outside of the home and taxi kids all over town. I don't have time to wash clothes that aren't really dirty. I had reached the peak of my frustration on Monday when I called Zachary in for a meeting and told him how angry I was that after many conversations about it he had still proceeded to toss everything all over the place.

Imagine my surprise when I went back downstairs to see if he'd cleaned up the mess, and in addition to a now-clean room found a note on his bed. This, you can imagine, was the cause of many tears on my part. What he lacks in order he more than makes up for in kindness. This is what he wrote: