If You've Got Time to Lean, You've Got Time to Clean

It is the ultimate nature vs. nuture question... did I create this little OCD monster, or was she born this way? Either way, Katie Anne is obsessed with cleanliness, order, and organization. She loves to clean and straighten up. She wipes under her high chair with a damp paper towel after dinner, cleans up her bath toys before she'll get out, and loves to help me "organize" my shoes in my closet and the cans in the kitchen cabinet. (Her "organizing" is getting everything out, examining it carefully, and putting things back in an order only she understands.) One of her favorite phrases right now is, "Put back!" If anything is out of place or not straight, she tells us, "Uh-oh... put back." A few recent examples...

*This morning, as soon as she woke up, she saw that her Diaper Champ was slightly askew from where Saunders changed the liner last night. She immediately told me, "Down, Momma, down... [I put her down and she walked over to it]... put back, put back." She tried to straighten it up, and she wasn't satisfied until I'd gotten it perfectly parallel to her dresser.

*In the kitchen, we'd left the dog treat container pulled forward to the edge instead of pushed back against the back of the red hutch. She pointed to it and said as soon as we walked into the room, "Uh-oh... put back." When Saunders pushed it back, she said, "Yay!"

*Yesterday, when she went to my parents' house, she saw they'd piled up some things where they'd cleaned out a cabinet in the living room. She told them, "Nasty, Gigi, Nasty!" She said the same thing about our dining room table this weekend when Saunders piled up all the old VHS tapes we were throwing away!

We did some work in our living room this weekend (another post to come later), and I was going around dusting furniture and Swiffer-ing the floor as we moved furniture. These pictures all come from that day, when Katie Anne did her own cleaning... she got baby wipes and wiped down everything she could reach! She literally cleaned for 20 minutes without stopping. Here's a little video of her cleaning, too.


I can't wait unless she's old enough to unleash her with a sponge and Comet in the bathrooms!