Ah ha!

Our house has a half-bathroom on the main floor, which is great for any time I have people over.  (Unlike our old house, where the most accessible bathroom for guests was up half a flight of stairs and was the same bathroom the kids used for bathing and brushing their teeth.  Which means the sink was always covered in toothpaste and there was often peanut butter smeared on the hand towels and doorknob.)  This half bathroom stays much cleaner.  Usually.

Except for some reason, the mirror always looked terrible.  There would be water spots all of the entire thing.  In the grand tradition of mediocre housekeepers the world over, I sort of stopped noticing it.  The faucet does that thing where it doesn't really give you enough water, so it tries to make up for it by blasting your hands in a way that is very splattery.  I figured that was what was happening to the mirror.

I blithely went on assuming this until the time I watched Bentley wash his hands, and then flick all the excess water all over the mirror before drying them on a towel!

Now.  I am not very good at making my kids do chores around the house.  Yes, that makes me a terrible mother and I should be teaching them and kids love helping out, yadda yadda yadda.  I know.  Or at least, I have heard this.  But I would rather just do something and get it done right rather than deal with the whining and the begging (on my part) and having it all wrong, while the other kids are getting into who knows what in the other room.  So sue me.  If that's the worst thing I do as a mother (it isn't), then I'd still be a pretty awesome mom.

But this time.  The second I saw what Bentley was doing and it all clicked, I marched him up to where we keep the cleaning the supplies, handed him the Windex and explained how to clean glass.  I made him clean that mirror and also the (equally appalling) mirror in his bathroom.  And told him cleaning them would be his job from now on if he kept flicking water on them.

And they've stayed remarkably clean ever since!

Victory, Mom!