Solving daughter's chaos theory

There's a meme doing the rounds on the internet that sums up daughter no.2 perfectly.
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Her room is like a trip to Ikea, after one short visit you end up coming out with four bowls, three mugs, some forks and a load of old candles.

Her big sister is pathologically tidy, even to the point of vacuuming her room once a week.

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But I’ve lost count of the number of times the boss has said: “I’ve just spent two hours gutting her room,” and then by the end of the day it looks like a football stadium an hour after a cup final.

You wouldn’t know it to look at daughter no.2, she’s always neat and tidy when leaving the house, never late for school, turns up at her dance class on time and is very well dressed.

It’s just that her room’s like a rabbit hutch and she doesn’t feel like tidying it.

Ever.

I braced myself and went in there this week to fill up the wash basket and picked about a dozen bits of clothing off the floor. Under a pile of jumpers was a £20 note she got for Christmas. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I was looking for that.”

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But for someone who lives in chaos she is a remarkably clear thinker.

Last week she organised and booked a surprise farewell dinner at a restaurant in town for a friend who is emigrating to Australia with her family in a few weeks.

Dinner was ordered for a dozen kids in their early teens, everyone got there on time and the girl who is leaving didn’t have a clue until she walked in the place and saw all her friends there. Now that takes some doing.

So if daughter no.2 can do all that, why can’t she pick her clothes up off her bedroom floor, make her bed and open the blinds now and again? It’s not much to ask, is it?

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Some kids hang everything up on the floor and daughter no.2 is no different.

Some time ago I said that her room looked like Jedi from Star Wars had been slaughtered in it, half a dozen complete outfits crumpled on the floor in pile after pile.

Will she ever change?

I doubt it.

What’s chaos to some is an orderly system to others.

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