I hate cleaning house, but sometimes it’s got to be done.

I have a rule of thumb: If it takes more work to step over the piles than to pick them up, I pick them up.

Dad had to threaten us with a spanking to get me and my siblings to clean our room. “It better be clean when I get home from work or else!”

So we got home after school and immediately began wasting time, watching Gilligan’s Island or whatever was on. Until suddenly we realized Dad would be home any minute. The dogs’ ears perked up when the Ford pickup got close. Two minutes’ warning.

So it was into the bedroom, throw the toys into the closet, make the beds and get done just as Dad was pulling into the driveway. In the nick of time. Just enough to make it look like we made an effort. Just enough effort to dodge a whipping.

And Dad of course marched right to the closet and said, “OK. Now clean the closet.”

Easy peasy. Just push everything under the bed. Until one day Dad got wise, swiped a broom handle under the bed and pushed it all out in the middle of the floor. “Now put everything where it goes. Don’t just dump it in the closet!”

Dad figured out the problem: three channels of bad TV for us kids to waste time and fight over. He finally got fed up and banned us from watching TV until he got home. “If you don’t have time to do your chores or your homework you don’t have time to watch TV.” He pulled out the channel dial and took it to work every morning.

All it took was a pair ofneedlenose pliers and the bad TV-watching shenanigans continued.

Then it escalated. Dad began taking the electric cord to work.

Luckily the mixer cord fit. So we watched TV  till we got nervous, then crammed everything under the bed like always.

Dad got so frustrated he nailed a long piece of paneling to the bottom of the bed frame so nothing except maybe a sheet of paper would fit.

When our strategy changed to piling it up between bed and wall, he kind of gave up. The man was a fearsome spanker, but I don’t think his heart was in it. Being a drill sergeant took time away from what HE wanted to do after work.