Cleaning Out the School Backpacks

One of my sisters-in-law has two school-aged children, and a certain selective procrastination.  Maybe this is learned avoidance behavior.

At the end of each school year, her kids come home and joyfully cast in the corner of their rooms their no longer needed backpacks.  They remain in place until she finally can no longer stand the squalidness of the preadolescents' bedrooms due not so much to the clutter, but the aroma!

Anyway, she decided to be a paragon of housecleaning while I was visiting, and tackle the backpacks.  To her horror, in her son's she found a half-eaten hamburger still in its wrapper, an elastic cloth device referred to as a jock strap, an old copy of Maxim, some papers with what looked to be beverage stains, and numerous objects not readily identifiable.  There was three books, those 'required reading' literary works for English.  Even with the questionable contents removed, the backpack still reeked too much for it to continue being in the house.

I cleaned out the other one.  Her daughter's at least smelled better; but it smelled due to leakage from a bottle of cheap perfume of a brand favored by a popular singer.   This was chemical warfare, grade school style.

  Apparently my darling niece circumvented parental injunctions against scents by having a bottle of contraband at school.  Oh well, there was likely to be a painful scene later on.

She decided that both backpacks were beyond rehabilitating, and trashed them both!