The principal household thoroughfares — front-door foyer, hallway to the kitchen, base of the staircase — were, at any given moment during the relevant period, blocked by some combination of the Respondent's backpack, lacrosse stick, soccer cleats, and a pair of athletic shoes that had been removed somewhere between the entry mat and the kitchen, but had not been removed in a single act.
The incident that brought the matter to the Journal was specific. The Client, carrying a basket of laundry from the laundry room toward the staircase, tripped on the backpack's strap, dropped the basket, and required several minutes to gather the contents from the floor of the foyer, the staircase, and — improbably — the dining room. One pillowcase was retrieved from beneath the dining table; a sock was recovered from the air-conditioning return; a single fitted sheet had to be unfolded entirely before its location could be confirmed. The Client's spouse, who had witnessed the incident from the kitchen, did not get up. This detail, we will note for the record, was offered without prompting, and on more than one occasion during the consultation.
Prior attempts to resolve the matter, the Client testified, had included a household chore chart taped to the inside of the front-door closet for a period of approximately eleven days; a series of escalating verbal reminders that the Client estimated at thirty to forty distinct instances over a span of two months; and one late-summer attempt at a sticker-based incentive system that the Respondent had rejected, citing age. None of these had produced sustained behavioral change. The backpack continued to occupy the foyer.
The Respondent's Defense
The Respondent's defense, when produced, consisted in its entirety of the phrase: "I'll move it later." Under examination, the phrase revealed itself to encompass three distinct representations. First, that the Respondent intended, at some unspecified future moment, to move the obstruction. Second, that the moving was conceptually pending and could not, in good faith, be characterized as not-going-to-happen. Third, that the Client was being unreasonable for surfacing the matter in the present tense.
The Journal has, in our experience, encountered the "I'll move it later" defense in something like ninety percent of household-thoroughfare matters. It is functionally an open admission of the conduct — the Respondent does not deny that the backpack is obstructing the foyer; she stipulates this — paired with a deferred-performance promise that operates, in practice, as a denial of remedy. The defense has the structure of a settlement agreement that the Petitioner has not signed.
The Limits of Equitable Relief
The Client sought a mandatory injunction: the immediate removal of the obstruction, and the deposit of the backpack in the Respondent's bedroom upon arrival home from school, every school day, in perpetuity. The Journal noted that mandatory injunctions are, as a class, among the most demanding remedies in the equity tradition. They require the defendant to do something, not merely to refrain from doing it. They are granted sparingly, and they require sustained enforcement attention from the issuing tribunal.
The Client allowed that she did not, in fact, want the matter to require sustained enforcement attention. She wanted the backpack moved. She wanted it moved without being asked. She wanted, in our reading of her testimony, a habit. The Journal was unable to deliver one. Habits are not, by their nature, the kind of thing a tribunal can enter as a decree. They are formed elsewhere, by repetition, under conditions of mild and consistent pressure. The Journal could not provide the pressure. The Journal could only describe it.
Disposition
The Client implemented her own remedy. She began, without announcement, placing the backpack on the Respondent's bed when she found it in the foyer. This required no discussion. The Respondent noticed. She found her homework rearranged. She found one of her phone-charging cables, which she had been looking for, now in plain view. The Respondent expressed mild irritation, which the Client received with the equanimity of a Petitioner whose remedy has at last become self-executing. The doctrine has a name, in some jurisdictions, for the practice of moving the offending chattel back to its rightful place. We have heard it called, somewhat romantically, "the law of the parent." We will note that it operates, in practice, without need of a written rule, a posted notice, or any kind of formal proceeding.