MARK MY WORD: IT'S TOUGH TO FIND THE GLASS SLIPPER IN THE LAUNDRY

We sympathize with Cinderella. Poor girl. She spent her days slaving away, cleaning up after her lazy stepsisters.

Let's face it, cleaning up isn't fun. Doing laundry has never been man's goal in life or even a woman's.

It clearly wasn't hard for Cinderella to decide between doing laundry and marrying the prince.

Tidying up is a challenge when you have kids. Our home at times resembles the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. Joni and I sometimes feel like emergency management officials, except we don't have an army of support personnel to call upon, and the Red Cross doesn't visit our home.

Of course, we do have our children, but Becca and Bailey don't have the same idea about cleaning up their rooms as we do.

Seven-year-old Becca and 3-year-old Bailey are more interested in clean closets than clean rooms. A clean closet is a great place to hang out, sort of like an igloo, but without the ice and snow.

No sooner had Joni cleaned out Bailey's closet the other day than the girls crowded inside for a better look. You can never have too much closet space. After all, where else are you going to hold that Barbie tea party?

In our home, clothes have a way of piling up on the carpet. Bailey, particularly, likes to change clothes a lot. On the weekends, she walks around in her swimming suits. She has a number of swimming suits, including some that are too small for Becca but still a little big for her.

Bailey can go through several suits in no time. Parading around in swimming suits and princess shoes has become a career move for Bailey. She'd clearly be right at home in Southern California.

Even when it snowed the other day, Bailey thought it would be fine to go outside in her swimming suit. She agreed to put on winter clothes only after she realized we wouldn't let her go outside otherwise.

Swimming suits seem to suit Bailey, but they don't put her in the mood to help pick up.

It's tough to clean up when Bailey is around. No sooner than you throw away some fast-food restaurant toy that you found behind the couch, Bailey shows up and retrieves it from the trash. Suddenly, it has become her most cherished toy.

Of course, that only lasts for a few minutes. Soon, she has moved on to other things. With any luck, we can throw the stuff away again when Bailey isn't looking.

But sometimes we end up throwing things away again and again. I'm all for recycling, but enough is enough.

During our latest cleanup campaign, Joni kept pulling shoe after shoe out of an upstairs closet. I had forgotten just how many shoes Becca and Bailey have had since they learned to walk.

The huge pile included everything from worn church shoes to tennis shoes.

You would think that with all these shoes, we wouldn't have to hunt for shoes every morning. But we do. That's because our daughters only have a few pairs of shoes they actually wear to school and day care.

When they're not congregating in the living room, those pairs of shoes often can be found hiding beneath a pile of clothes.

I've often thought we could save a lot of time as parents if we just attached beepers to the shoes. Then we could just press a button and follow the beep when we're in search of a particular pair of shoes.

Cinderella certainly would understand about losing one's shoes.

Unfortunately, when it comes to cleaning up, we can't count on a fairy tale to do the work.

Still, we can always hope that somewhere in that pile of shoes there's a glass slipper. With any luck, we might find a matching pair.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.