Venting

I have three older kids in addition to my baby boy. They all live with me; well one is home from college and allegedly is going back at the end of the summer. They are 27, 25, and 22. As I write their ages, I express such disbelief in this. I love them, I really do, but here is what I would really like to say to them right now.

Guys, we love you a lot. You are all adults-- our obligation to feed and house you ended when you turned 18. What that means is that living with us now is a privilege -- not a right -- and that privilege is being abused. This is my house and I have the right to make the rules and have the house kept how I want it. I am not a neat nick and have never been the best housekeeper -- but now I have a baby who will be crawling soon and everything is going to go in his mouth. I want to have my house clean and organized for him.

So, when you use my kitchen, please clean up after yourself -- if the dishwasher is too full, start it, if its been cleaned, empty it. Don't leave your plates, dishes, cups and knives covered with PB&J in my sink waiting until you get around to cleaning up (or waiting for someone else to do it). If you grab a blanket while watching TV on the couch, fold it when you get up, when you bring your stuff down, take it back up when you go. Don't get out a thread and needle and leave it on the coffee table -- for days -- until someone else puts it up, if you get crumbs on the counter, clean them up, if you get broccoli on the floor, sweep it up. When you take off your shoes when you come in-- don't just leave them wherever you kick them, pick them up.

Turn off lights, turn off the TV, lock the door when you leave. do one thing around the house every day. Keep your stuff in your room unless you are using it.

Wow. All that seems so basic, so simple you would think three adults could do it. But they can't -- or won't.

Is this reasonable? If I have this conversation with them, someone will get pissed, someone will say I'm unreasonable, someone will argue that Hubby and I leave stuff out or have in the past, someone will say I do this but so and so doesn't someone will complain and all of them will walk away and say God what a bitch.

But this is my house. I have let one of them stay there for 1.5 years and the other a year. My youngest has only been home for a month or so.

None of them work full-time, two recently got fired from their jobs, the youngest acts like it is unreasonable for us to expect her to stay in college.

What a dysfunctional family that I have brought a little baby into.

I need to stand up to them and if they want to leave, I need to say fine. I need hubby to support me though and that's the hard part.

We have to start childproofing soon. Maybe that is a good time to try to have this conversation. I guess as pitiful as the girls sound above, I am even more pitiful for not having the wherewithal to stand up to them and say shape up or ship out. I just hate the conflict and the arguing that inevitably comes from that. Maybe that is why we are all pretty pitiful.