It dawned on me the other day that I live out the plot of this book each and every time I try to vacuum my house. Here is my attempt at how I think the Mom's version of this book would go.
If You Give a Mom a Vacuum
If you give a Mom a vacuum, she's going to take it to her son's room to get started on the seemingly simply task of vacuuming the house. She'll see Legos, books, toy planes, pajamas and every size and shape of stuffed animal covering the floor.
Before she can vacuum, she'll have to dig down through the layers of debris to see if there really still is carpet underneath it all. She'll start by picking up the Legos, and she'll have to walk into the living room to put them away.
When she walks into the living room to put them away, she spot a half-empty sippy cup. She'll walk over to the sippy cup and smell it to see if anything has grown or fermented inside of it. When she doesn't pass out from sniffing it because it only contained water, she'll decide to take the sippy cup into the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher.
As she opens the dishwasher, she'll notice it is full of clean dishes. So she'll begin to empty the clean dishes out of the dishwasher. She'll want to put the still-wet Tupperware containers on a kitchen towel to air dry, so she'll bend down to open the kitchen towel drawer. When she opens the drawer, she'll notice that the drawer is completely empty.
This will remind her she needs to wash the load of dirty towels sitting in the hamper. She'll walk into the closet to grab the basket of towels to throw in the washing machine. Before she starts the load, she'll want to gather the remaining dirty towels and washcloths out of the bathrooms.
When she goes into the bathroom to grab the towels, she'll notice all the stuff sitting out on the counter. She'll put all the bottles and tubes and jars and toothbrushes away. As she turns to leave, she'll notice an empty cardboard tube where a full roll of toilet paper once used to be. She'll reach under the sink to grab a new roll of toilet paper, but there won't be any there, either.
Next, she'll walk out to the closet to grab a few more rolls of toilet paper to put in all the bathrooms. She'll spot the paper towel in the back of the closet, and this will remind her to put more paper towel in the kitchen, too.
Once she walks into the kitchen to put the paper towel on the counter, she'll see 47 pairs of shoes by the kitchen door that leads to the garage. She'll grab the shoes, and head back to her kids' bedrooms to put them away in their closets.
When she gets to her son's closet, she'll see the vacuum in the middle of his bedroom. She'll see that it has yet to be plugged in, and that will probably remind her she was going to vacuum his room...if she can ever find the carpet in there.
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Call it productive procrastination. Call it "Give a Mouse a Cookie Syndrome." Call it attempting to clean while there are real live children living in the space you are attempting to clean.
No matter what you call it, this little parody pretty much sums up why I rarely see any task all the way through to completion at my house. It seems like everything is always started, but nothing is ever finished. I have a hunch Laura Numeroff was simply trying to vacuum her kid's room when this whole "Give a Mouse a Cookie" idea came to her.
Even when your attempts to complete any task get de-railed by the millions of other tasks and distractions awaiting you, You Are a Good Mom.
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