Seriously! How do my kids make such a mess in such a short amount of time? You guys, I swear they are the offspring of Taz the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes!
Our middle child happens to have the largest bedroom which is the room of choice to destroy play in. I swear, it constantly looks like the room threw up.
Then, when I have the audacity to tell them they need to clean it up, you would think I have just asked them to move the world to a different universe by their reaction.
Fingers are pointing and mouths are whining about who played with what and who made what mess. I start hearing that they can’t put x y z away. I then point out that it is just like taking it out, except backwards. So, if they were able to take it out, they should be able to pick it back up and put it where they found it. Then someone has amnesia and “doesn’t know where this goes”-Oh, Lord help me!!
One day, I helped them clean it up-got rid of the garbage, broken toys, toys that they have outgrown, and the beloved crap toys you get from fast food restaurants. I organized and sorted and everything looked wonderful. It was ready for a Pottery Barn photo shoot (well, they would have to bring the Pottery Barn items-because let’s just be honest, we can’t afford that, and obviously my children would not take good care of it, but other than that it was ready).
I smiled, I felt good, I felt like we had accomplished something. I told my beloved children, see how nice this is. You can find what you want to play with. Everything has it’s place. When you are done playing with something, put it away before you get the next thing out.
TWO. HOURS.
Two hours! It lasted all of two hours. I about lost my mind. Ok, I did – I lost it. There may have been some yelling stern lecturing about how unhappy I was about the situation and some (empty) threats to take everything away…
I am ready to take all but 1 toy away from each child and if they can keep that 1 toy picked up, I might consider giving them another 1 toy and so on, and so on.
The problem-
Where do I put all that crap? Our home has very little storage options and what we do have is full (I may have some hoarding tendencies-although, I have found that watching an episode of Hoarders helps me purge our home). So, it stays in their rooms and the cycle continues.
I wonder if there’s a way we can word it to look like they have special skills to put on school applications….
-Thorough, fast worker.
-Does not procrastinate, gets right to demolition work.
-Good at taking things apart.
Well, if you need me, I will be upstairs, picking up the pieces.