What I Still Don't Know About Mothering - Part 1, (of 199)

So lest anyone think I'm putting myself out there as an expert, (see last post) let's bring it all back to earth. Even after 20 years of mothering, there are far more things I still haven't figured out in this job. This is merely the tip of the ice-berg:
Why I bother - not the whole mothering thing (although sometimes....) but bits of it, like why I bother reminding them not to take food into the living room (peanut butter is a bugger to get off sofas), why I bother yelling at teens who've left clothes on their bedroom floor, etc. Get my meaning?

How to get people to put things away - Apparently we have lots of fairies in this house. There's the "Oh that's OK, just drop it there" fairy, and the "Just because this is yours, doesn't mean you actually have to keep track of it" fairy. (They both have a great sense of hum(u)or by the way.) OK, ours is a fairly large house spread over four floors which basically equals huge potential for mess, but please. It's not as if I'm an enabler, going round picking up after people; I wasn't put on this earth for that. But still, the stuff is just everywhere -
How to make my voice carry - Anyone who knows me knows I don't have a particularly quiet voice, and would probably imagine me being able to bellow quite impressively, but it seems not. I can holler after one of the kids for 10 minutes with no success and yet it takes one shout from the Ball & Chain or a sibling and the target is alerted immediately. What gives?

How to keep track of my keys - so this might not strike you as a mothering problem, but when you've just yelled at your kids for twenty minutes on the subject of being ready to walk out the door on time, it becomes a major mom-cred issue when you're standing at the door frantically rooting round your handbag for door keys. I blame it on the fact that when walking through said door on the way in, I am usually carrying violins, guitars, and any manner of extra kid stuff, so being able to put everything down while preventing the dog from her usual bid for freedom means that - well, there's zero chance of an orderly dispersal of items. I am also impeded by various family members borrowing my car keys but not before they separate the door key from my very own key ring.