Room checks and tidy desks: is it fair to ask kids to follow rules we don’t follow as grown-ups?
As soon as I walked into my flat this evening, I threw my coat on the couch, kicked off my shoes, and opened my parcels. Then I left the cellophane wrapping on the table and went straight to my room to rest.
“If any of the girls here did what I just did, it’d be unacceptable,” I thought. “What does that say about me?”
For context, I work at an all-girls boarding school, and every morning, staff do “room checks.” This means that we check every room and there are certain criteria that needs to be met. The bed needs to be made, the curtains opened, the bin emptied, the floor vacuumed, the floor cleared and the desk tidied. Each task receives a green (good), yellow (needs improvement) and red (unacceptable) mark.
If a girl’s room has a lot of red checks, then she is in trouble, and can lose certain privileges. I’m not going to lie, room check is my favorite duty, because I love an organized space.
At the same time, I feel like a hypocrite for asking the girls to keep their rooms tidy and take away their privileges if they don’t, because if someone did a room check in my flat, I’d most likely get all red marks.
However, the fact that my flat can be a total disaster and I don’t end up in a frenzy might be evidence that I am getting better at coping with my OC tendencies. Long gone are the days of straightened posters on the wall, picture frames at a 90-degree angle, bed sheets with neat corners, and undergarments carefully folded in drawers with clear dividers.
These days, I don’t empty my laundry basket or wash the dishes right away. I don’t care about recycling piling up, or even an overflowing bin. For me, that’s a good sign!
As an adult, I can make my own decisions about how tidy my space is. The students at the school, however, don’t get a choice. This leads to a self-enquiry practice.
“Am I a hypocrite for insisting that the girls keep tidy all the time, while I don’t?”
“What’s the purpose of room checks, and giving consequences if the standards are not met?”
“Is it fair that the girls must follow rules and staff members don’t? What does that say about us?”
The more I think about it, the more I realize the importance of dialectics. It’s a good thing to teach the girls to keep their rooms tidy, and it’s OK if they don’t have tidy rooms 100% of the time. You can have a tidy space and not obsess over pairs of shoes lined up perfectly. There are times when a tidy space is required, and other times when it’s not urgent nor important.
I’ve revisited my own standards when it comes to cleanliness, because they used to be rigid and unreasonable, and they were fueled by my OC tendencies. My guess is that I had those standards because I didn’t feel like I had much control in my life, and being able to control anything, even if it was only clothing items in my closet (organized by shape, size and colour) helped me cope in some way.
Now my flat is a huge mess sometimes! But so is my life, and it’s all right to appreciate the messiness.
My next challenge: can I tolerate having guests over when my flat is not perfectly tidy?
Let’s see.