Bedroom Doors: A Mother's Solace

In the bedroom of my oldest son you can see these things from the doorway:

• A double bed, no bedspread, top sheet wadded into a giant ball, bottom sheet in the process of becoming unfitted.  On this bed will be a pile of folded clothes if it is daytime.  In the nighttime the pile migrates to the floor.
• A dresser with a collection of sailing trophies & sailing boats, neatly organized.  That may be hard to notice tho, since the dust covering them acts as a blanketing snowfall, making just their shapes visible.  If you should open the drawers, however, you would see that whatever clothing actually makes it INTO the drawers is all neatly folded - right down to the underwear.
• A book shelf - again, you can tell which books have been read recently as their titles are still visible thru their much lighter coating of dust.
• The reason you must view all this from the doorway will become apparent to you as you try to enter the room & you stumble - oops!  You look down at your feet.  There you will find:
• a tennis racket
• a pair of gym shoes
• a pair of tennis shoes
• a life-jacket
• a hat
• a whistle
• sunglasses
• a water bottle
• a laundry hamper

It may not have occurred to you that an empty doorway INTO a room is obviously wasted space - look how much can be stored there!  Plus, there is the added bonus in that it is very difficult for the mother to come into the bedroom to complain about the unmade bed or the mysterious shapes lurking under the dust.

In the bedroom of my youngest son you can see these things from the doorway:

• Two twin beds, pushed together - one of them has no bedspread, but instead a top sheet.  You would not call the bed 'made', altho the sheet has been artfully arranged over the pillows in the shape of a dead body.  The second bed is covered with a quilt.  On it, you will find a rotating selection of these things:
• Lego's
• papers from school
• money - crumbled beyond all recognition
• trash from pockets:  candy wrappers, rocks, odd bits of broken plastic, & other scary slimy things
• balloons for water fights
• pens - many
• a Nerf gun
• a plastic sword
• books - many 
• ipod speakers
• piles of clean clothes
• piles of dirty clothes
• &, last but not least, a Darth Vader Helmet that continually escapes from the Halloween Box.
• It is good this child has the spare bed - otherwise I suppose all THIS stuff would be in the doorway!
• A large 3-tier shelf housing a collection of dusty Lego Star War's fighter sets ready for battle
• A dresser housing same.  If you should open the drawers, however, you would notice that the ONLY space allocated for clothes in this dresser is the underwear drawer.  You didn't really expect anything to be folded in there, I am sure.  The rest of the drawers are filled with Lego's - sorted for the most part by color - a mother's feeble attempt at bringing order out of chaos.
• On the floor there are several Lego projects in various states of completion.  One will be Star Wars, one will be a battle scene & one will be an invented game involving Lego characters & their weapons, dice & a zillion little pieces of paper.  There will be the parent-required path thru the madness that winds from the doorway to the bed.

Upon seeing these things from the doorway, you will have no desire to go in.  In fact, you may just want to reach out & shut the door...