It’s happening.
My youngest college kid is upstairs packing. While that is exciting in itself, the fact that he is up and packing before noon is a late summer miracle. In fairness, we did demand an early rise today. We also demanded an early room cleaning–as in “You are not saving that until 10:00pm the night before you leave.” He was not delighted to comply but…it’s happening.
We are skidding into this summer’s finish line.
Truthfully, it’s been an absolute delight having him home for nearly three whole months but it’s also time for him to get back to life as a student whose parents have no idea what he is doing at 3:00 am. We are (mostly) ready to return to empty nesting and he is ready to return to a place where no one is wondering if he will engage a washing machine or vacuum cleaner or cleaning wipe.
When he left us last year, his first as a college student living in a dorm, he knew how to use all of those things (the washer, the vacuum, even a dust rag!). While he spent two semesters learning the college basics as he checked off those general education classes, he seemed to have unlearned many of the basic life skills we’d sent him into the world with. I was asked recently what cleaning supplies should be packed for the dorms. My answer? None.
Our child practices the “Leave It” theory. It’s much like the “Let Them” theory except applicable to garbage, spills, and dirty clothes.
It is incredibly awkward to stare up at a six-foot something baby adult and convince him to return to the realm of “neat.” I suppose the good news is that this giant does clean up after himself in our home’s common spaces. While I do wish I could ignore what has happened behind his closed bedroom door for the last three months, well…that’s proven to be challenging.
We don’t have many rules in our home for either of our college kids. It’s not that I wouldn’t like more rules as they do make my Type A world spin round but I have learned that rules for baby adults typically only have one purpose: to elicit eyerolls.
We have very few rules these days:
- No food in your bedroom. This has been a house rule for decades. We just don’t allow it as it is a gateway to ants, missing plates, and mold.
- No alcohol in your room. This is an old rule rebranded. We’ve had a “clear liquids only” policy for as long as we had that “no food” rule but we discovered that baby adults will lawyer up when you ask them why there is vodka on their bookshelf.
- Give us a ballpark on your comings and goings. We don’t really care where they are coming from or going to but we do appreciate knowing whether we are being robbed at 3:00 am.
- No same bed sleepovers. Sorry, kids, your parents are from the 1900’s.
- Keep your room somewhat respectable. We’re not asking for our standard (okay, mine) but we are asking for a standard of some sort.
Here’s how the Summer of 2025 played out:
No food in your bedroom. This has been a house rule for decades. We just don’t allow it as it is a gateway to ants, missing plates, and mold.No alcohol in your room. This is an old rule rebranded. We’ve had a “clear liquids only” policy for as long as we had that “no food” rule but did you know that baby adults will take that “clear liquids only” rule and assume that vodka is fine, then? Sigh.- Give us a ballpark on your comings and goings. We don’t really care where they are coming from or going to but we do appreciate knowing whether we are being robbed at 3:00 am.
- No same bed sleepovers. Sorry, kids, your parents are from the 1900’s.
Keep your room somewhat respectable. We’re not asking for our standard (okay, mine) but we are asking for a standard of some sort.
Welp.
Currently, the broken rules in my youngest’s room represent the actual bridge between childhood and adulting. Next to his bed sits a half-filled bag of Teddy Grahams–a nod to his past favorites. Tucked in a cooler blocking the door to his closet is a mostly-finished bottle of Vodka–a nod to life far from his parents’ roof. No need to panic here as the cooler went on a beach trip weeks ago and no, I don’t know why it’s still not been emptied nor why it’s upstairs rather than in its garage home.
I probably should only give half-credit to the sleepover rules but I will give full credit because my baby boy allows me to live in a world where no one has seen his Spiderman underoos.
His room? Dear God, his room. There are truly no words to explain how his room was kept this summer other than “not good.” It was “not good” enough to earn a late summer speech from both parents that this would be the last time he would keep his room this way. I think words like “You’re twenty years old” and “How are we still having this discussion?” and “You do know you’ll never be able to break rule #4 because no girl would EVER dare enter a room that awful, right?”
When we arrived home with this child back in May, he deposited a 64-ounce thermos on the workbench in our garage while explaining that he would “Take care of that later” and that it “Has some sour milk or something in it.” Um, what? My husband saw my face and whispered something about it being fine and that our son would take care of it.
He’s so cute, my husband. Really.
It should come as no surprise that the science experiment of a thermos sits exactly where it landed three months ago. No worries, though, as it will not be forgotten on move-in day. It has become my personal mission to return that thermos to the dorms where, perhaps in a few more months, my baby adult will remember to finally clean it out with loads of bleach.
The only question was, where to leave it (in the closet? under the bed?) and then…life offered me a gift that I could not turn down. A few weeks ago, our son mentioned buying a fridge for his dorm this year rather than renting one. This made sense when doing a price comparison and, holy shit, I had the most epically brilliant idea.
What if I sent back that 64-ounce, mold-laden thermos inside a new fridge? All I had to do was convince this child to let me buy the fridge so that I could unbox and rebox it here, before we all hit the road.
Done.
Turns out it was quite easy, as A) Who wouldn’t jump at a free fridge and B) there was a great sale at our local Lowe’s.
I did tell my husband about my epically brilliant idea, as I wanted to make sure it was going to be as funny as I thought it would be. He was quickly on board as we imagined that moment, long after we’d driven away from the dorm, when our child unboxed his brand new fridge to find this:
As it turns out, he set up that fridge while we were still sitting in his room amidst a 147-degree day and the chaos of moving in. His reaction? Happy to see that thermos, but a little disappointed that I hadn’t returned it clean. Welcome to parenthood, my child.
Just kidding, let’s hold off on that entry for another decade or so.