The Not so Great "Great Room"

Travel back in time with me to the not too distant past when kitchens had doors on them.  Maybe not in the house you grew up in, but you know what I'm talking about.  Picture the house on the Cosby show or any other eighties' sit-com.  They all had doors.  You couldn't walk into the kitchen without going through a clearly defined door, and in order to leave the kitchen you had to go out through a door.  The kitchen and the rest of the house were blissfully separated.  Oh the simplicity of the good ol' days.  *sigh*

Then came the invention of "The Great Room."  Some genius homebuilder decided it would be wonderful for families to have a great big room where they could cook, eat, watch TV, and hang out all at the same time in the same room!  In theory this sounds nice.  Who wouldn't want all their favorite people and favorite pastimes all snuggled together in one big cozy room?  I mean, just listen to the name "Great Room."  Doesn't it sound just, well, you know, GREAT?!

In our home, we have a Great Room.  And it is nice to sit at the table at night and eat ice cream while watching a movie.  And if we had network TV, I'm sure I would enjoy watching Dr. Phil while I fixed myself an afternoon snack.  But those small perks come with a big price.  In our house half of our Great Room is carpeted AND full of upholstered furniture.  So our toddler can be sitting at the table sweetly nibbling a PBJ one second, and the next second he can be wiping his cute little peanut buttered lips across the entire back of the couch leaving a trail of jelly footprints in his wake.  It literally takes less than two seconds for any single item of food in the kitchen to become a monstrous, organic mystery smeared on every single fabric surface in the entire Great room.  Not so great now, is it?

I try to set boundaries.  Don't walk on the carpet with food.  Keep your food on the hard floor.  And that works sometimes. But even then, the kids can be standing on the hard floor of the so-called kitchen and still wipe their grubby little hands on the backs of all the furniture in the great room.  There are no natural boundaries, no visual clues to help the obedience impaired. Often my kids don't even notice they've wandered off the hard floor and onto the carpet.  They are standing in the kitchen eating a popsicle one second, and the next second they are in the middle of the carpet looking at a puddle of melted blue ice and wondering why Mommy's vein is pulsing out of her head. 

Oh how I've longed for a fifteen foot baby gate to put across the middle of the entire room.  But even that wouldn't really solve my problem.  The kitchen table is barely a foot from the back of the couch, so a child could literally be sitting at the table, and reach their hand out and wipe it on the back of the upholstery.  Why do kids do this?  The same reason they flush toothbrushes down the toilet.  Because they can!

But not anymore!  With a little bit of ingenuity, I have finally solved the problem of food migration!  I have been working on this plan for years, but finally found all the parts I needed to make it work.  It was so simple, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner!  We call it the Food Force Field! or Triple F.

It started with the idea of a laser security system (you know, those red lines that people have to sneak through in spy movies, and if you break the light beam an alarm will sound? They're actually for real! Who knew?).  Okay, maybe that's not the best example.  Our garage has a little laser sensor that stops the door from closing if something breaks the beam.  Does yours have one like that?  Okay, so you know what I'm talking about then. You can actually just buy them at Lowe's.  So I bought three of these lasers to install on the wall in the middle of our great room where the kitchen part divides from the living room part.  The first one six inches of the ground, then eighteen, then thirty inches.  Low enough that no one can sneak under, and high enough that toddlers can't reach over.

But I didn't just want an alarm to sound.  What if I were outside or in the other room and didn't hear it?  What if I heard it but couldn't get there in time to stop them before they made a horrible mess?  I needed something to not just let me know the boundary was breached, but to actually stop kids from crossing the boundary in the first place.  So I did a little research on YouTube, and with a little help from my brother-in-law, I converted the laser light beams to electricity beams, essentially turning those little invisible lines into an electric fence!  Awesome right?  I know! 

So now I can sit my kids at the table for lunch, and when I turn my back, I know they aren't going to sneak onto the furniture an make a mess.  They can't.  If they try to cross the laser line, they'll get an electric shock forcing them back onto the kitchen side of the room.  It's essentially a force field between the kitchen side and the living side of our great room.  They run on a simple nine-volt battery, so the charge is mild and no one gets seriously hurt (it's less than half the strength of an electric shock collar for dogs!), and the surprised look on their little faces is absolutely priceless! 

I can turn the force field on or off when ever I need to using a simple control pad similar to a home security system keypad.  It is so fast and easy.  Not only is our new force field working just like I'd hoped it would, but there is an extra benefit I never imagined.  It keeps kids OUT of the kitchen too.  If I'm cooking and don't want to be bothered, I just go into the kitchen and turn on the force field and presto, the kids are kept safely out of the kitchen.  No more worrying that little fingers will touch something hot or sharp.  It is a real life saver.

So next time you come over, you may notice how sparkling clean my house has become.  My carpets look brand new.  My furniture never has fingerprints or crumbs on it.  The kids play happily on one side of the room, and I can keep a maternal eye on them while peacefully eating a bowl of ice cream from the safety of the other side of the force field.  My new force field has made my life so blissfully simple.  I recommend every home should have one.

In my dreams.

*sigh*

Marcia

     

So how do you keep food in your kitchen and of the carpet and furniture?  Seriously, I need to know.



*Note to reader: This post is intended for comedic purposes only.  I did not at any time build a force field or intentionally shock my children as a means of discipline or crowd control, nor do I recommend electricity or lasers as a child care tool.