Milá Sally…

My dear Sally,

What should I do with that girl? She’ll be 19 this summer—she’s talented, cheerful, beautiful, smart… and an absolute slob. Unlike her two-years-older brother, who is precise, structured, and obsessively tidy. Same upbringing, same environment, same parents with the same genetic material—two completely different outcomes.

“Kate, clean your room! It’s a disaster zone in there!” I issue a clear and firm instruction in an irritated voice.
“Mom, I just finished cleaning,” comes the nonchalantly calm reply. Slightly pitying, as if addressing a clueless fool.

Or:
“Mom, you should’ve seen it an hour ago—you would’ve been shocked! It’s pretty good now!” And I feel like I’m about to faint.

Or this gem:
“Mom, you know if you tell me to clean, I won’t want to. I won’t do it out of spite. So why even tell me? I need to find the motivation from within.” And I gasp, remembering my own mother furiously throwing everything into a giant pile in my childhood room, and how I solemnly swore to myself I would never do THAT to my kids.
Was I too hasty with that promise? Should I have broken it ages ago and started doing the same to my beloved daughter—regularly?

When I appeal to her future role as a mother to my grandchildren, emphasizing the need for a tidy, exemplary household, she calmly replies:
“Mom, who told you I want to have kids?”
At that point I get genuinely mad. I emphasize that in our family, the current trend of „easy life without children“ is unacceptable and that I raised my two kids precisely so I could one day be a happy, spoiling grandma. I’m looking forward to that role!
My future grandchildren will be my revenge—just as my daughter is now exacting cosmic revenge on behalf of my own mother, for the mess I used to make in my room.
I just don’t understand why the revenge is this intense. Why does the universe work like this?

One time I accidentally lifted my daughter’s mattress while changing the bedsheets. It was summer, just after she’d left for a language course in Berlin. She hadn’t managed to change her sheets, so I wanted to wash everything and hang it out in the sun so my beloved darling would have a clean bed to come home to.
But under that mattress lay a horrifying secret: several empty bottles of cheep Vodka, gin, rum—and who knows what else. A proper kit for a proper alcohol poisoning. I just stood there in disbelief. I even recorded it on video in case I was hallucinating and sent it to my own mother as corpus delicti—proof of my utter failure as a parent.

Then I called my smart, beloved daughter on the train and roared into the phone:
“Kathrine!!! What are those empty liquor bottles doing under your bed?!”
My little girl is usually Kate, Katy, Kitty, Sweetheart, Darling, Honey or Cutie
Only when I’m at the peak of negative emotion does she become Kathrine. She hates that form of her name.
My voice trembled with rage. If I’d had her within arm’s reach, I might have actually hurt her.

“Whaaat?! Mom, I can barely hear you! The signal’s terrible in this train. What did you saaaaaay?”
“The bottles, Kate! The bottles under your bed—what the hell?!”
“Oh thaaaat… don’t worry, mom, those have been there forever. Since New Year’s. Did you need anything else, mommy?”
Her voice practically dripped with syrupy sweetness.
“Why the hell are they still under the bed in JULY?!”
“Mommm, we just never got around to throwing them out, that’s all. Chill out. I’ll take care of it when I get back.”
She shifted her tone to a soothing, adult-to-tantruming-child voice.
“Oh, you BET you will,” I snapped, spitting rage for the sheer satisfaction of getting the last word in.

Don’t get me wrong—I did teach her cleanliness, hygiene, and order. Just like her brother. And with him, it took root perfectly.
I patiently explained how it’s useful in life when everything has a place—so you can find it when you need it.

Every time I gave this lecture, my daughter would look at me with such pity. You could practically see her thinking: “Poor mom, she can’t help her obsessive neatness disorder.”
And she’d patiently explain—again and again—that in her room (a.k.a. chaos), everything does have a place.
It just takes time to settle. It might shift over time. But eventually, everything resurfaces.
This works for her. It doesn’t work for me.
She handles it just fine. I don’t.
She’s an artist. She thrives in creative chaos.

A few dirty tea cups never find their way to the dishwasher. Candy wrappers mix with yogurt lids, alongside moldy grape remains in a bowl.
A cluster of hair ties lies tangled with makeup, nail polish, embroidery floss, and crayons.
Hairspray stands next to a new perfume, flanked by deodorant, facial toner, and a brush for her long hair.
(Why isn’t that in the bathroom?!)
And, of course, her clothes.
Worn ones dominate the floor—even though she has a brand-new wardrobe with tons of empty hangers and an older closet full of shelves.

Her freshly washed clothes, which I carefully folded into neat piles, are kept in her 140cm-wide bed. Stuffed behind the stuffed animals.
“Mom, it’s fine—just toss it to me,” she says on day three when I point out she still hasn’t put away the folded underwear I left in the hallway.

“Toss it? What do you mean toss it?”
“Yeah, just toss it here on the bed. I’ll find it easily that way.” She laughs, fully aware of the effect her words have on me.
I flush red, I puff up, and I want to scream in rage.
Instead, I restrain myself and announce:
“Even if you don’t get into that university in Denmark, know this: THIS mess is staying only until graduation. After that, I’m cleaning it all up, tossing what I want, and letting you in only like a museum visitor! I want a tidy house!”
“Mom, relax. Then just don’t come in here if it bothers you so much. Or shut the door. Go hang out in my brother’s room—it’s better for you anyway.”

Dear Sally, I really don’t know what to do with her.
If I dealt with this by pouring myself a glass of wine every time, I’d be an alcoholic by now…
The only thing that gives me hope is the fact that my daughter often leaves her chaos behind to go sit in her brother’s perfectly tidy room.
Officially to use his computer—but deep down, I know she goes because it feels good to be in a clean, organized space.
And one day, it’ll click.
Maybe when she has her own home.
Or her own kids.

What do you think?