Mom Shuts Down Living Room to Keep it Clean for the Holidays

(Via VizArch/iStockPhoto)

All parents probably know the trauma of cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning until the house is finally clean, and you breathe a sigh of relief … and one of your kids suddenly walks through the room looking like Pigpen from Peanuts and undoes all your hard work in seconds. Well one Nebraska mother has had enough of that, and after finally getting her living room to Peak Clean earlier this month, she promptly announced that the room was shut down and completely off-limits to her family until Thanksgiving.

You thought you were just going to go in there and read a book? Or that you could walk on that nicely vacuumed carpet and surely your shoes couldn’t be that dirty? Think again.

According to Nebraska.tv, Twitter user Nick Denbow’s mother did not tell him this was her plan, either. He was just walking towards the living room one day and found she had literally taped over the doorway so he couldn’t get through.

“This room has been cleaned for the holidays and is officially CLOSED until Thanksgiving,” she wrote. “Special permission will be considered for you to sit on my clean furniture and/or walk on my clean carpet only after the following conditions have been met: 1) You have showered and are dirt and odor free from top to toe. 2) You are wearing freshly laundered clothing. *If permission is granted … No food or drinks are permitted at this time! Thank you!”

The wild thing is that Denbow’s mother cleaned the room at the very beginning of November, which meant that her family was not allowed to walk in the living room for a month.

“Okay how my mom just gonna close down the living room for a month??” a bewildered Denbow asked.

okay how my mom just gonna close down the living room for a month ?? pic.twitter.com/ALDzJbC8AK

”” nick denbow (@nickdenbow11) November 5, 2016

Well, Nick. It looks like she did it with some cool zebra-print washi tape. Pinterest is full of different kinds of crafts and tasks a person can do with washi tape, but using it as Police Tape to block off a clean room is one of the more useful and creative options.

Denbow’s Tweet was liked more than 35,000 times and retweeted more than 15,000 times, and Clorox sent him a giant pile of cleaning supplies and said they hoped he was reunited with his living room soon.

OK, closing one’s entire family out of a room for almost a month to keep it clean might be a little bit overkill, but my parents kept a whole separate living room that we children weren’t allowed into without adult supervision. A washi-tape barricade seems pretty reasonable by comparison.