There are stones in my handbag.

They are not round pieces of amber radiating calm. Nor smooth pebbles collected from a sacred river.

They are rough, muddy, dull grey rocks. Three ordinary rocks, each one the size of my child’s palm.

And they are, inexplicably, in my handbag.

I was searching for tissues for my sneezing daughter when my fingers grazed something hard in there.

My jaw drops when I see the hard things are rocks. An irritated grumble rolls in my throat.

Because I did not put the rocks there. But I think I know who did.

“Mama, can you come and hold the goggles?” my daughter calls from the bathroom. Her sneezing fit is apparently over.

What goggles?

Perched on her tippy toes on a bathroom stool, she points down at the rainbow-coloured goggles hanging from the tap.

“Here, you do this,” I offer her the toothbrush, “while I put those away.”

I scoop up the goggles and move to return them to their rightful home in the swimming bag.

“No!” she shrieks with both hands held up like a traffic cop, toothpaste frothing on her lips. “Don’t put them away!”

“What! Why?” I ask.

The question hangs in the air while she finishes spitting into the sink. The goggles hang from my index finger.

“I need those for my bath tomorrow.” She grabs the goggles, lobs them back into the sink and heads off to bed.

A balloon of fury grows in my chest.

The change within

When I became a parent more than 10 years ago, it seemed that household objects suddenly developed a will of their own. They started appearing in strange places.

Coffee cups in the bathroom. Tennis balls on the bookshelf. Bathers in the bedroom. Shoes in…well, every room.

The baby wipes would start their day on the nappy table, then somehow appear in the kitchen, on my bedside drawers and even under my doona, once.

The children’s many shoes appeared in different parts of the house and garage, hardly ever with their pair. Mysteriously, the same shoes would disappear whenever someone was meant to be getting dressed or leaving the house.

Were these objects moving of their own accord? Was someone using a magic wand?

Of course not.

The objects were being moved by human hands.

Specifically, the five sets of human hands belonging to the two adults and three children in our home. Our hands carry these objects from room to room, the object serving some function or being the subject of fascination for about 13 minutes. And when that function is completed or the fascination ends, the objects are promptly deposited on the spot.

Wet towel on the couch? We must have bribed someone to dry their hair by offering TV time. Or, more likely, one of us running late for work.

A torch under the bed? Well Mum, they explain, we were searching for the tooth fairy.

And the carrot sticks? Um, we thought she might be hungry.

I knew the reasons these misplaced objects were misplaced, and so they didn’t seem so misplaced anymore. They were just following us around, really.

After several months observing this, I surrendered fully to the mess. I have stopped fighting the chaos that comes with having a young family.

I made sure our bodies and clothes were clean, but I gave up trying to keep shoes out of the lounge room. I stopped picking things up off the floor.

In fact, I decided to look up more instead of looking down. I put more art on the walls. I gifted myself a few indoor plants to hang from the shelves and ceiling. I enjoyed positioning them carefully around the house and I revelled in their stillness. Their quiet, non-shedding qualities.

I surrendered to enjoying the wonder and beauty of my children’s faces, and learnt to ignore the trail of chaos in their wake.

But today, the chaos makes me antsy. I send a silent curse to the rocks. I grimace at the goggles.

Today I am tired of having no space untouched by curious little people. I am tired of feeling like all that I own is on display everywhere all the time. Today the clutter in my supposed sanctuary is cluttering my exhausted mama mind.

I look at my three children sprawled on their beds, reading, cosy in their pyjamas.

Content in the chaos.

Spit-spot!

I decide it’s time to give the sanctuary a spot clean.

I clap twice, Mary Poppins-style, my lips pursed with purpose.

“Okay kiddoes, let’s clean this place up.”

This is greeted with silence.

I try again, more like Maria in The Sound of Music. A little bit of mischief creeping in.

“Hey, I have an idea, let’s all spend 5 minutes picking up our shoes before bed. With music!”

Nobody looks up.

Hmm, I think, what would Maria do next?

I spot the Dr Seuss classic Wacky Wednesday on the bookshelf. I feel the singing nun smiling down on me.

“Who wants to read a Dr Seuss book with me?”

At this, the children all look up.

Success!

In Wacky Wednesday, described as a “silly book of errors”, a young boy finds his world is turning a little upside down.

Objects are appearing in unusual places.

There’s a bunch of bananas in an apple tree, a sock hanging from the bathroom tap.

Other things seem topsy turvy: a perplexed driver sits in the backseat of his car. A cup hangs in mid-air outside the pantry. A tiny mouse chases a terrified cat.

My children gather around to peer at the pages. Their bright eyes flick across the pages, spotting the signs of absurdity in each perfectly ordinary street scene.

Within seconds, we are giggling together.

We delight in spotting the house with no door and discuss how else to get inside. My youngest child points out the steps floating mid-air in the garden and her brother quickly mimics falling off the edge of the steps that lead nowhere. Cue the cute laughs.

In signature Dr Seuss style, there is order in the chaos. Method in the madness.

There is one additional absurd thing each time we turn a page. The steadily increasing number is subtly included in the story – which is told in flawless rhyme, while also teaching children to count.

It’s genius.

My youngest child checks for the right number of wrong things on each page. Satisfied that the numbers are in order (while secretly being taught to count), she gazes around the room.

I seize the moment.

A spoonful of sugar

“I know!” I say with a mischievous smile. “Let’s play Wacky Wednesday!”

“What’s that?” my eldest child asks.

“Well, you point to the wacky things all over house, call them out, then put the wacky things back where they belong.”

I wait for the protests. The complaints. Nothing comes.

They are out of bed instantly.

“Hair brush!” I hear coming from the kitchen.

“Four shoes in here – and they don’t even match!” we hear coming from the bathroom.

“Stinky socks!” says the youngest, triumphantly pulling a few colourful, dusty socks from under the couch. She passes them to her brother, who pitches them overarm into the laundry basket.

It’s working.

Wacky Wednesday is our spoonful of sugar tonight. The tidiness of my sanctuary has been restored. Inside and out.

Even after our tidy-up, my daughter counts four more wacky things in her room. Instead of picking them up she crawls back into bed, announcing she is saving them for the game tomorrow.

With a satisfied sigh, I make a mental note to put something odd in the garden. Perhaps the tomato sauce bottle. Because it so happens tomorrow is Wednesday.

“Mum?” my middle child calls from the bathroom. One last visit before bed.

“Can you help me find my rocks? I got three at the park today, but I can’t find them anywhere.”

Before I can respond, he goes on: “Also, we should play that wacky game here in the bathroom tomorrow.”

“Why?” I ask.

He points accusingly at a small indoor plant sitting neutrally on the towel shelf.

“That definitely doesn’t belong in here.”