A vast majority of Stapleton residents have young kids, and with kids, comes messes. Nothing can stop them. We all start off with rules regarding where they can color, paint, play with play dough, and other crafts, but over time, the kids wear us down and win out. It’s the same thing with food. First, it’s only eating at the dining table, then the ottoman, and pretty soon, it’s just, “try to eat over your plate.” Families try to clean up the messes, or hire people to clean them up, but the mess force that is children seems to be an unstoppable force. “I feel like I’m constantly sweeping or vacuuming,” said Stapleton mom Lesley Fogdall. “Or wiping things off, or scrubbing things, and we have house cleaners come once every week. It is just exhausting.”
In fact, most kids are so messy, parents refuse to purchase new furniture until their kids are out of the house. “What would be the point,” said resident Jason Starbeck. “They would just ruin that as soon as we got it. It’d be like throwing money directly into the garbage. We already waste enough money on these kids, we don’t want to give them the satisfaction of destroying one more valuable thing in this house.” So, most Stapleton residents move on with their days pretending not to notice the almost incomprehensible inadequacies of their furniture.
Many residents do make an effort to have their furniture professionally cleaned, however. “We called an upholstery cleaning place to see if we could get some furniture looking a little better at least,” said Fogdall. “The guy came out to give us an estimate, but basically, he decided it wasn’t going to work out. When he was reviewing our downstairs couch, dressed in full hazmat garb, he became visually disgusted. He said he has been working in upholstery cleaning for over a decade, and before that worked in the exterminator business. He told us very frankly that the cracks in our downstairs couch were, ‘the grossest thing ever.’ He then preceded to give us the phone number of one of his competitors, and wished us luck.” You definitely cannot stop kids from making huge messes. In fact, I’m not sure they can even be slowed.
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