Have created a Homework Drawer. It has sellotape, glue, pencils, pens, rulers.... ANYTHING your child will need for their homework.
This follows on from approximately 18 years of homework, when a child will say, where is a Pencil, and we will spend 30 minutes finding a Pencil, which we find under the cushions on the sofa, lead smashed to smithereens by a week's worth of bottoms sitting on it.
Then child says, where is the Pencil Sharpener, and we spend another 15 minutes finding the Pencil Sharpener, which we eventually find under the sofa, next to several felt tips that have no lids on, next to the lids, with no felt pens in them.
Almost every homework has begun this way, with varying times of 'finding' things. By the time the Object has been found, all enthusiasm for Homework has evaporated, and the next half hour is spent either crying (them) or shouting (me).
Imagine the bliss of my Homework Drawer!
Child says, 'Mum, where is a Pencil?'
And I say, with ill-concealed excitement... 'In the Homework Drawer!'
And said Child goes to Drawer and opens it and FINDS THE BLOODY PENCIL ALL ON THEIR OWN!!!!!!!
Oh, the joy. The satisfaction. The peace.
Have also got my own Tool Kit, Matches, Firelighters, and Torch. They are all hidden away where NO ONE CAN FIND THEM AND PUT THEM SOMEWHERE 'SAFE'.
Because how in HELL am I supposed to know that 'the matches are outside in the shed under the chair that has some paint on it'?
?????????
Or that 'the hammer is in the greenhouse next to the black pot with seeds from last year's runner beans in it'?
?????
Or that 'the firelighters are on the patio'?
???????????????????????????????????????????
???????
And so I am at last an organised person, who knows where things are.
Well, where THOSE things are.
Still haven't a clue where my wellington boots are, last seen on my feet before the weekend, and worn by someone else since, who put them 'somewhere, but can't remember quite where'.
Or where my entire sock collection is. Husband says he put them in my drawer.
????
'Oh', he says, 'Maybe I put them in someone else's? What colour were they again? Yes, they might be in Daughter's sock drawer.' Go to Daughter's sock drawer. Find Youngest's entire sock collection, plus Middle Son's entire sock collection, but not mine, or Daughter's.
Go back to Husband and tell him, who says, 'have I tried Middle Son's Sock Drawer?'
?????
In a word, no.
And so while some things are blissfully in the place where I have put them, other things aren't.
But I'll think about that for another day.
Today I have a Homework Drawer!!
Yippee.
