I don’t know if I made a great big oopsie or the best mistake of my life!! Every so often, I come across a “Hoarders” marathon. And every so often, I’m tempted to stop and watch for a while. I find that it motivates me to finally get in there and clean out a random junk drawer. Yes, I have more than one junk drawer…WAY more…

Anyway, since “Hoarders” involves sometimes tragic people with serious mental problems, I don’t know that this is proper entertainment for a six-year-old, who just so happened to be in the room with me. But since Emma Kelly was on my laptop watching “Bye Bye Birdie” AGAIN — with headphones on because Mommy is getting a little tired of hearing, “BYE bye biRRRRRRRRRRdee” sung over and over again by the divine Ms. Ann-Margret — I figured she wasn’t paying attention to the TV. So I decided to stop on “Hoarders” for a little motivation.

After about 15 minutes of watching cleaning crews find dead rats and maggot-infested everything, Emma Kelly asks me, “Why is that woman living like that?” Oops! I decided to act like it wasn’t that big of a deal and said, “Because she never throws anything away.”

EK jumped up and said, “I’m going to go clean up my room!!” She started going through all of her toys and books and stuffed animals and DVDs like a kid on a mission!! But she was METICULOUS — picking up each thing and thinking about it for a minute or two before putting it into one of three piles: Keep It; Get Rid of It; Let Me Think About It. In other words, this was taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R. And she had to hug each stuffed animal and talk to it and consider its feelings. Sigh. Needless to say, every stuffed animal was a keeper. Anyway, after about 2 hours of this, I finally made her stop to eat supper. She fussed about the interruption and half-heartedly took a few bites, but then she jumped back up and went to clean some more. What had I done??? Since it was getting close to bedtime, I made her a deal — We could go through all the Barbies and that would be it for the night. But first thing in the morning, we’d get started on the playroom. She fought me on it for a bit until she conceded with a “Fine!”

The next morning, she wakes up and the first thing out of EK’s mouth? “Let’s go clean my playroom.” She’s obsessed!!! But could this actually be a good thing? Maybe I could just let her watch a good 15 minutes of “Hoarders” at the first sign that this newfound compulsion to clean is starting to wear off. If I keep it up, I may never have to clean up after my kid again!!