Today I made the Kinderbesten tidy their rooms. They were relatively obedient but, as with most things involving kinderbesten, the effort to get them doing something is frequently greater than the effort required to do that thing yourself. However, I did exercise persistence and managed to coordinate and motivate the beasts into action upon this occasion.

At one point I did wonder if it was really worth the effort. It took at least an hour to get them to do what was probably about 15 minutes’ work. But we did get it done, and the rooms looked fantastic in the end: so much so, in fact, that I kept popping my head through the doors for the rest of the weekend to admire the change.

And that’s what makes it worth it. I wrote recently about quality of life, and how important it is to take some pleasure and satisfaction from your immediate surroundings. If the kinderbesten can appreciate just a little bit of that, and take a little bit more pleasure from being in their own space, then hopefully it can improve their quality of life too.