Peter McKay

For the past few years, my wife and I have divided up the task of making sure the kids' rooms don't spiral too far out of hand. Sometimes this takes the form of ordering kids upstairs to clean up after themselves, or sometimes when we get tired of the sound of our own voices and the sight of blank, bored stares, it means getting in there ourselves with a vacuum, a trash bag and a wet dust rag.

I've always taken charge of the boys' rooms, while my wife has the girls' rooms. This wasn't such a great strategy on my part when we had three boys at home and twin baby girls, but now that the two oldest boys have moved on and the girls have gotten older and messier, my wife has double duty with tweens, and I have it pretty easy. The investment will pay off: I'm done in three more years.

While girls' rooms are decorated with all kinds of knickknacks, pictures and little keepsakes, boys' rooms are simpler and more functional. Our boys have always had a homework/computer desk they use to store empty Gatorade bottles and potato chip bags, a bed they can throw dirty clothes under, and a dresser where they can pile dirty and clean clothes in one big heap. Our 15-year-old also has a corner full of electric guitars, amps and special effects pedals. Since it takes so little time to clean, I can pick up a guitar, crank it up to 10, and find out how well the plaster is attached to our walls.

Making a boy's bed is easy. My boys have always had just a pillow, a sheet and a blanket — little else, sort of like a bunk in a POW camp.

Girls' beds, on the other hand, are elaborate production numbers. They need sheets that match, which are then topped by a matching comforter. (Or better yet, complements!) Then, on top of all that, they've got to have at least two pillows, one pillow sham with ruffled edges, 10 to 12 stuffed animals and assorted throw pillows with inspirational and/or cute sayings on them. It's a time- consuming little mountain of preciousness that I simply don't have any interest in recreating each morning.

Our girls, while twins, have traditionally been as different as night and day.

They're Felix and Oscar: One — I'll call her Felix — has always been more precise, controlled and careful — finicky. The other — Oscar — not so much. Oscar, a free spirit, goes through life without much of a care in the world.

Oscar's room, the smallest in the house, has always been a nightmare. She doesn't have much closet or dresser space so things get piled up in corners; she has to jump over a sea of shoes just to get out the door. Her room was originally meant to be a baby room and is not really big enough for a real twin bed, let alone a real twin.

Over the past few months, though, we noticed Felix's room getting more and more disheveled — with clothes all over the floor, and her bed, which she'd always been fastidious about, turning into a big messy pile of covers, cute pillows kicked into corners and stuffed animals face down on the floor like crime victims.

We called the girls together in the hall and said we had to have a talk. We couldn't say much to Oscar because I knew she'd complain about having to live in a closet. I turned to Felix.

"You've always been the overly neat, finicky one!” I said. "Everything just so! Your room is starting to look worse than your sister's room, if that's possible. Oscar makes her bed every morning these days, and yours looks like a bomb hit it!"

Felix looked at Oscar, with the kind of frown that says, without saying it, "Either you tell him or I will!"

Finally, Oscar cleared her throat.

"Uhh, Dad," she said, "I actually haven't made my bed in two weeks!"

I turned and stared, confused. Every morning I came down to find her bed made, I said, sometimes as soon as she'd get up. She shrugged.

"I decided to give up getting under the covers because it's such a hassle to make the bed," she said. "So, I just sleep on top."

I turned to my wife, who was shaking her head.

"Your problem, not mine," I said. I headed off to our son's room, where making the bed takes 11 seconds and where, if I crank it high enough, the guitar can shake the glass in the windows.

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