Princesses need lots of mattresses, and lots of toys…illustration Edmund Dulac, 1911

Keeping a teenage girl’s room tidy is no easy task, writes Candida Baker,  of her constant battle to minimize the contents of her daughter’s bedroom.

It was the pile of flour that did me in.

I had decided that it was about time that the Princess’s room had a jolly good cleanup, and it was one-step forward two steps back as she clung onto every little item and every outgrown piece of clothing.

But when I came across a pile of what looked like a burst balloon and flour, I naturally reached for the dustpan and brush.

“No!” came the anguished shriek. “Don’t clear that up, that’s my memory.”

(Actually I think she’d got it wrong because in fact that’s what MY memory looks like, but that’s another story.)

It turned out that the pile had in fact once been a toy made of a balloon and flour, bought for her by her Dad at the Fremantle markets in Perth and the Princess was loathe to part with it, despite its obvious ill-health.

This would have made more sense if it wasn’t for the fact that since then she’s had several more of these toys, including a brand-new shiny one bought only a few weeks ago by her mother from, yes, the Fremantle markets in Perth.

I forcibly ejected her from the bedroom, shut myself in and set to work.

Several hours and six full garbage bags later I emerged triumphant, having found several surfaces including her bed, the floor and the ceiling, all of which are useful in a room.

I then suggested that perhaps we could just maybe work our way through the several thousand books in the shelves and give just maybe a few of perhaps the Spot books for instance, to our next door neighbour’s three-year old daughter.

Let’s just say the idea went down like a lead balloon, or even like a burst balloon with flour in it. After at least an hour’s haggling, the Princess had agreed to graciously part (but only because I wanted it for my book shelves) with a very large book entitled Bundjalung Country, and an art book of Australian print-maker Barbara Hanrahan’s work, full of drawings of very explicit female body parts which had somehow made its way into her book shelves and also came back to mine.

The two servants, namely myself and the Princess’s friend from over the road begged her to reconsider, and after a period of time she agreed that perhaps her small friend could receive Angelina’s Christmas (because the Princess had two copies of it so even she couldn’t miss it), a copy of Postman Pat (because the Princess had never liked it) and some Spot books because the servants insisted.

In the end the Princess loved her new-looking room, with its tidy shelves and dusted surfaces – not to mention all the space, because, as she said, “now we’ve got rid of so much stuff, Mum, there’s room for lots more things.”  Oh well another year, another cleanup, and a few more floury memory piles (and that’s just mine).

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