I took a pack of cigars out of my shirt pocket and tossed them into the garbage. “I quit,” I said.

Everybody in the room stopped talking. You could almost hear the collective holding of breath. Even the bird stopped chirping. Sadie, who’s 13 and who has been bugging me to quit for ages, looked up at me. “If you quit smoking cigars dad, I’ll keep my room clean,” she said.

Her room is a virtual disaster area. It’s probably eligible for some kind of environmental clean-up government funding. I looked at her. “You’re on,” I said, resolutely. If this was all it was going to take to get her to commit to keeping her room clean I was willing to give it my best shot.

A few minutes later we went upstairs together to where her bedroom is located. We went in, after forcing open the door with our combined weight and some considerable exertion (there’s lots of teenage girl debris on the floor behind the door). Once inside, I turned on the light and looked around. I gasped at the vision of utter destruction before me. Her dresser drawers were hanging open and all of her clothes - her shirts, socks, underwear, pants, halter tops, belts, sweatbands, bathing suits, shorts, pyjamas and dance skins - were exploding out of them. More clothes were heaped in mountainous piles on the floor. Dolls and stuffed animals were laying face down on top of the heaps of clothes as though they’d tried to make a dash for the exist but succumbed from the effort before they got there. Toys and remote controls for various electronic appliances (her TV, VCR, DVD player, video game console, Cappuccino maker, Easy Bake Oven, etc.) were sprinkled, discarded, atop everything. Her cell phone was perched atop one particularly big pile of clothes like a maraschino cherry on a big glop of whipped cream. More clothes - honestly, how many T-shirts and pairs of track pants does one little girl need? - were hanging off lights, doorknobs, tables, bedposts and the backs of chairs. Her desk, at the far end of the room (I think that’s where it is; I couldn’t actually see it), was smothered in youthful refuse of one kind or another.

I sucked in my breath with a whistle and looked at Sadie. “Geez,” I said. “How much do you think I smoke?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I looked at her and pointed into the mess. “This is ten pack-per-day room,” I said. "Big honking unfiltereds, too,” I added. “Cubans.”

She shrugged like it was no big deal. “I swear I’ll keep it clean provided you stop smoking cigars,” she promised.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “This is one heck of a mess. I doubt you’ll be able to do it cold turkey. You’ll need some kind of help for sure.”

“Like what?”

I threw my arms up. “I can’t even imagine,” I said. “Some kind of patch, maybe. Or else you could go to Messy Rooms Anonymous. All I know is I don’t smoke anywhere near this much.”

To date, I’ve cut back on the cigars to about half of what I was smoking before. And Sadie has cleared about half of the mess in her room. So we’re both making progress.