And decided that this adage is hugely driven by laziness. Are you really going to wait for the skies to dump two feet of snow at your door before admitting defeat? Are you really going to allow a layer of snow to fall on top of the first layer, and then another layer above that, and another? You know what happens to all those layers? They compress. And they freeze. Do you prefer thwacking your shovel through layers of tightly compressed snow and ice over bundling up every two hours for a quick run through soft and acquiescent snow? That’s your druthers.

There’s a little secret that overrides both the holy saying and my logical rebuttal. It’s called prevention.

Ever heard of road salt? Try it. It works. I’m not saying you won’t need to shovel. You’ll do the work — before it stops snowing — and you’ll sprinkle salt over your neat path. You’ll repeat the process a little later. It’s not so hard. It doesn’t take so long. And it flatly debunks a universal saying. How cool is that?

Same with toys.

One day, after many years of mothering, I was struck by an aura of wisdom.

Closet locks.

I don’t know if it was the Clics, the crayons, the doll clothing, the LEGO, the puzzles, the Playstix, the Magna-Tiles, or the Playmobil that did it for me, but standing at the entrance to our playroom and trying to estimate the number of hours it would take to see the floor again, all I could do was ask myself, Where have I been until now?

I combed Amazon for the perfect ones. I did not want hardware that required installation, because I needed something I could remove if I wanted the playroom to look like a normal room if I ever, say, hosted a sheva brachos in my house. I needed something that was very easy for an adult to use, but very hard — make that impossible — for a child to unlock. The perfect option, I discovered, was a removable combination lock. I would fasten them around the double-door knobs and keep the code a military secret.

Wisdom does come with age, and it took more than three decades to develop this particular brand of sense.

And guess what?

My kids learned the drill very quickly. You want to switch activities? Sure, sweetie. Let’s pack up whatever we were playing until now so we can get the next thing out.

Do they like it? Probably not. But the alternative is to play with one toy every day of their lives, so they choose the lesser of two evils.

It’s straightforward and it works, and it actually remains faithful to the original saying. Read it again, you’ll see.

Just remember to stock up on salt. And to keep those closet doors locked.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 984)