The Day I Invented a Hero Who Hates Tidying His Room

It’s 7:45 PM. The living room floor has disappeared under a blanket of plastic bricks, mismatched stuffed animals, and capless markers. I feel that slight tension rising in my temples—the one that arrives just before the bedtime ritual, when you know there’s still "the chore" left before you can finally sit on the sofa.

"Come on, shall we tidy up a bit before the story?"

My son’s response was immediate: a sigh so deep it seemed to carry all the misery in the world, followed by a dramatic collapse onto the rug. At that precise moment, I should have been the pedagogical parent. I should have explained the importance of taking care of one's things, or turned tidying into a timed speed game.

But I was just tired. I just wanted that quiet moment, right here, right now.

So, we pushed the Legos aside with our feet to clear a path to the bed, slipped under the duvet, and that’s when I started telling the story.

The Appearance of Barnaby the Mess-Maker

Normally, in the stories I make up (or the ones I launch on Alba Time when my imagination fails me), the heroes are brave; they save planets or go in search of lost treasures. But that night, my brain took a detour.

I started talking about Barnaby. Barnaby wasn’t a knight. He was a little boy who lived in a room so cluttered that his socks had eventually formed a mountain range and remote-controlled cars lived in wild tribes under the desk.

Barnaby never wanted to tidy up. Never. And the most surprising part? In my story, there was no magical moral at the end. Barnaby didn’t discover that "tidying is fun." No, Barnaby simply loved living in his chaos, because to him, every pile of clothes was an impregnable fortress.

What This Little Act of Giving Up Taught Me

As I recounted the adventures of this slightly messy hero, I saw my son’s eyes sparkle. He didn’t feel targeted by a disguised lesson. For once, we weren’t talking about what he should do, but about what he sometimes feels: that immense laziness, that almost poetic pleasure in seeing his toys occupy the entire space, like an extension of his own imagination.

I realized that by creating this character, I had let go myself. By accepting that Barnaby was an imperfect hero, I was accepting that my own evening was imperfect. The living room was still a mess, the bricks would still sting my feet if I stepped on them to get a glass of water later, but the weight of the "must-do" had evaporated.

We often have this image of the parent who must transform everything into a learning moment. We put crazy pressure on ourselves for every interaction to be constructive. Yet, that night, it was our complicity in the "not doing it right" that was the strongest.

Why It’s Okay Not to Be Exemplary

We can’t be the guardians of order and discipline 24/7. Sometimes, being a parent also means knowing how to sit in the middle of the ruins of a plastic castle and deciding that it doesn’t matter. It’s accepting to tell a story where the hero doesn’t change, doesn’t improve, but is just happy in his mess.

That’s actually why we designed Alba Time with this idea of personalization. Because sometimes, we need a story that speaks about real life—the one where we’re tired, the one where rooms are a shambles, and the one where we’d rather laugh at a mess than fix it.

Breathing in the Disorder

The end of Barnaby’s story? He fell asleep on his pile of stuffed animals, perfectly serene. My son fell asleep too, a smile on his lips, his hand hanging off the bed, brushing against a forgotten fire truck.

I walked out of the room, navigating around the obstacles. The living room was still a battlefield. I didn’t tidy up. I just turned off the light, made myself a tea, and savored the silence.

It wasn’t a productive evening. It wasn’t an exemplary evening. But it was a gentle evening, and deep down, maybe that was all we needed.