Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Crazy?
 

THIS:

*photos removed*

:foottap

I am SO at the end of my rope with my girls and their room.

In fairness to them: (And these are the only things I can come up with in their favor)

**They share a room, and it isn't huge. It isn't all THAT small, either.
**________ is fairly neat, _____ is messy, but it all seems to bleed over. (names removed to protect the guilty)


I waver between helping them clean up, threatening them and wanting to pick up every.single.thing that is on the floor and throw it in the trash. The only thing that stops me from the latter is knowing that I'll be the one who'll have to replace the lost shoes and school uniforms. :foottap:foottap:foottap

What on earth would you do or have you done about messy kid rooms? Jeffrey isn't messy. His room gets a little askew from time to time. Unlike the girls, I'll tell him to go clean it up and he will make his bed, put everything where it belongs and it looks neat as a pin.

Ugh. I'm just so mad about the rooms. Not only that, but Sarah stuck pictures onto her wall with duct tape. DUCT TAPE. I told her to take them down, and instead of taking her time, she ripped some of them off--and the paint with it. Probably my fault for not doing it myself, but still.... So now I have to repaint her wall. :girlytantrum

--And ANOTHER thing that completely baffles me: Why do they keep taking the sheets off their beds? I hate to sleep without sheets! :blink

I was a neat kid. The most my mother ever did for me was fold clothes and put them away. I kept my room and desk area very neat and organized, so I cannot identify with this messy tendency.

SUGGESTIONS???? Would you make them sleep outside on the trampoline for a couple of months? Because that's what I'm thinking about.... :foottap

Do you think this is normal? Do your kids' rooms look like this??? 0_o Would you just shut the door and walk away? Or do something about it?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I'd say it's fairly normal for some kids.

And if it helps, I've seen worse!

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

There is a third rail between cleaning up and tossing everything.


Just take the stuff left on the floor. It becomes yours. If they want it, they have to earn it back.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Five grown boys here and each one was in a different place on the neaty-messy scale. I am a natural neat-freak and always have been. I fold my underwear and roll my hose... I turn shampoo and conditioner bottles around on the shelf so that labels face out... Cans in the kitchen are organized by type and size... My messy kids drove me NUTS!

Now that they are grown and gone I realize how short their time with me really was and how much of it I spent on this conflict. Many/most of the negative and truly unkind things I ever said to my children were about their messiness. I remember thinking how much nicer life would be without them to constantly ruin my enviornment.

Wanna know what I think now? Bet you are already guessing in your perceptive way...

Yep, I'd trade every unstained carpet, every unchipped dish and every unripped piece of clothing to have those days back.

After your girls are gone you can clean that room, fix it any way you want and even repaint the walls... But until then unless it's a health hazard I say just go with the flow... They will soon enough learn that having to dig through piles to find stuff makes life harder.... and they'll deal with that or not in their own way.

In the mean time you will save on unnecessary conflict and use more time for the fun things in life :)

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

:blink My thinking is, how on earth are they going to keep an entire house clean someday if they can't keep a single room clean? I'm sure their future husbands will have expectations of clean clothing put away, made beds and clean floors. At the very least. :foottap

I tried this one time--I bagged everything up and put it out in my shed. But, they actually needed things that were in the bags (school notebooks, shoes, etc.) and so I caved within a few days. My fault. :(

I did think about removing everything except their school uniforms and school shoes. Church clothes, they'd have to wear whatever is actually hanging in the closet.

What do you suggest for earning it back?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I really like you. :)

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I like you too :)

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Looks pretty normal to me. Do they know you will eventually clean it up?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

This might be the key. They know what your limit is. :icecream

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

:thumbsup :thumbsup

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

How old are your girls? I'd just leave it messy. They'll get tired of it after while when they realize mama is not gonna clean it up for them! ;)
I raised 2 sons too....not QUITE as messy as girls it seems LOL! They just stink worse! LOL
And T2W is right, don't sweat it too much. They do grow up fast.

BTW, love that hard wood floor in their room! And they have good taste in CHOCOLATE!!! :D

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

My experience with my girls is that as teenagers, they were just plain messy. There were times you couldn't see the floor of my youngest daughter's room. As they matured they became more organized. Your mileage may vary.

What about making them do their own laundry?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Do they have too many activities?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I like T2W's advice!

Just close the door.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

And....if it helps to know - - my daughter's room would look like this all the time and now she has two babies and keeps a very picked up, clean house!

I heard her just this weekend tell someone that she was raised in a neat home so she guessed that's why she was picky now.

You would have never been able to tell it by her room. But, how I kept the rest of the house was what she learned from. I just never allowed food in her room.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Well. I am guilty as charged. I get tired of it and clean it up. I do have a breaking point. :D

They are 17 and 15. :foottap And I am so surprised that my son is so much neater than the girls! I thought it would be the opposite. The chocolate: I brought those home from a church event where we had s'mores and all the chocolate bars disappeared within 24 hours! LOL!!!

Lacey, believe it or not, that is not hard wood. That is vinyl adhesive flooring. Cost is cheap, cheap (about .79/sq. foot), and it is SUPER durable and easy to clean. We put it down in the kids rooms and the hallway, after ripping out the old, nasty carpet that was in there when we bought the house. We couldn't afford real hard wood at the time, and I've always thought carpet was impractical for kids' rooms--especially with pets. It was a good decision, and you really can't tell the difference just by looking at it. It went directly down onto a primed concrete slab. My sister tried the same stuff in her bathroom on a plywood floor and it keeps peeling up. I don't know if that's because of the plywood, or if it could be the dampness in the bathroom. The downside is: It's not real wood :( and it's not very eco-friendly (so I've been told). I ordered from this place: http://www.globalbms.com/index.php/vinyl-plank.html

Okay, this I haven't done...at least, not very well. Oldest girl does her own laundry sometimes, anyway, because she wants to keep her clothes together. My mother sometimes washes clothes and gets the girls' clothes and mine mixed up. Youngest girl will dump everything she owns into the washer, including dry-clean only clothing, jackets, clean clothes that she doesn't want to put away and even her iPod--which somehow has come through the washer and dryer twice and still works. She was very sad about a very expensive skirt that was ruined--her Dad bought her a very nice outfit this summer, and the whole thing is dry clean only. She threw the skirt in the laundry after I warned her not to and it shrunk. I hated that she lost her beautiful skirt, but I think it was a good lesson about checking tags. At least, you would think.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

keep the room picked up. for one.

then other stuff like using a toothbrush to clean grout in your tile... fun stuff like that.

deep cleaning projects.... the real key is not caving....

oh and if you have something they need, then they can have it but they have to trade something they have and dont need (but really like) to get it.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I like T2W's advice... they do grow up way too quickly. I have two teenagers. My daughter is neat and tidy, (*but didn't always use to be!) and my son, usually always neat and tidy when younger, now allows his room to sometimes get in disrepair. LOL.
Still haven't figured that one out... but...

I understand your dilemma. Just walking by that room would stress me out to no end. Here are some suggestions...

1. I guess you could always just keep the door shut, and not have to see the mess.

2. You could pick a day to go in with the girls, and do a head-to-toe cleaning of the room. Then sit down, at the end of it all, and explain that anything left on the floor longer than 24 hours goes in a trash bag. In order to get it back, they must perform certain chores around the house. Make a list of things that typically might land on the floor... clothing, books, shoes... and determine a chore if each one falls onto the floor, in order to earn it back.

Sounds tedious, and you will have to do some serious work as a parent to keep this discipline... but I think if you put a good effort towards it, for at least a month or so, you'll see results. And, you may be pleased to see that doing hated dreaded chores is worse than sloppiness...

3. If these don't work... go back to T2W's suggestion... :)

Let us know what you decide to do... I'm very interested in what you decide to do :)

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Oh, and when they start dating you can always have their date pick them up from their room - - I bet they'd clean it then. LOL!!

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Our week is pretty full, but I don't know if they have *too many.* They have homework in the evenings, piano and Hannah has to take care of her horses. Tuesday afternoon they have piano lessons after school, Wednesday night is church, Thursday night is music (only for Hannah).

This is probably what I will end up doing. After I go in and put sheets on their beds and dust and pick up their dirty clothes and sweep and mop. :D I do know that part of the problem is that they have way too many clothes. When they were younger I would declutter a couple of times a year and take out everything they had outgrown and worn out. Now they don't really outgrow anything and the nice stuff pretty much stays nice. So they are collecting.... Maybe we need to set aside a day and see what I can talk them into donating to Goodwill. Maybe we need to not shop for clothes again until they're in college.

Well, that makes me hopeful!! Hopefully once they're in charge of their own space, they'll take a little more pride in it. :blink

FOOD IN THE ROOM!!! I forgot about that one!!! Major problem, because we live in the country, and we struggle with mice. :foottap I took a broom the other day and swept everything out from under Sarah's bed, and there was a plethora of candy and flaming hot cheetos.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

LOL!! :heeheehee

Wow! I will sure be looking into gettin some of that then as we plan on doing a little floor work in the near future. It's beautiful and looks so real. Like you, we just can't afford the real wood floor.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Okay, this is comical: Hannah has a boyfriend now and he does see her room every weekend. Every Friday night (or Saturday morning) Hannah cleans up her side of the room, and the girls argue because Sarah refuses to touch her side. See that big clothes rack in front of the windows with the blanket over it? Hannah put that there to try to hide Sarah's half. It doesn't work. :heeheehee

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

:heeheehee

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

A tip for making it look real is to start at one side of the room and stagger the sizing. That way the strips don't end at the same place across the room. Also, take the time to really, really clean the floor underneath. We mopped our floor multiple times, filled in cracks in the concrete and then my husband treated it with some kind of stripper or primer. I can't remember what it was called, but I'm pretty sure he got it at Lowe's. I also thought the dark color looked the most like real wood, and unlike some of the flooring I saw at Lowe's and Home Depot, this stuff has wood grain texture cut into the vinyl.

I'm pretty sure the company that I linked will send you a sample on request. I can't remember if I ordered a sample or if a friend shared a sample with me.

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Thanks for the tips! :thumbsup

Looking at the website now. Some beautiful vinyl! Amazing how closely it
looks like wood!

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I have a suggestion Miss Brattified. Turn them over to PressingOn. I'll bet she could straighten them out! And probably have them voting for the same things you put forth. :foottap :happydance

Been Thinkin

Oh come on PO! I'm just kidding! :yourock

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

LOL!!!! I am quite sure that she could handle it!!! I confess that I am a pushover and that is at least 95% of the problem. For instance: when they got home from school today, I was all set to have them help me go through their clothes and clean out their closets. Then Hannah says, "Mama, do you mind if we go to revival tonight?" (And then Jeffrey pipes up and asks if he can go, too.)

Um. How do you say no to kids who voluntarily schedule extra church into their week nights? :blink

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

I think you really do have a case of just typical teens. They may get better in a year or two. :heeheehee

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. When we raise kids, one of the biggest things I've learned is PICK YOUR BATTLES. If that's not a hill worth dying on, then don't fight over it. Believe me, when they eventually get their own homes, they won't live like piggies. Then they'll be all upset with their own kids who are messing up their houses :)

On the other hand, one of the things my mom did to us (there were 5 kids in our family growing up) was that she decided at one point that anything left on the floor or wherever it didn't belong went into a box in her locked closet. We couldn't have it back for six months. No matter how hard we begged.
All 5 of us ended up with only ONE pair of clean underclothes, one set of jammies and most of us only had one or two outfits. So then we were required to wash our undies out in the bathroom sink every night before we went to bed so we could have clean ones to put on before bed. (she let us dry them in the dryer. but we could not run a whole load of laundry for just 5 sets of underclothes. My mom was tough!)

That worked for a couple of years. But not permanently. Kids will be kids, you know :)

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

by the way, just having pics of their room posted on here for the whole world to see would be enough for some kids! What do your girls say?

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

They have NO idea! :D

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

Surely you wouldn't post them on Facebook, would you? :heeheehee

Re: Away From Politics--What Else Is Driving Me Cr
 

No, I wouldn't go that far...they have too many friends on my friend list. :D

I told Hannah that I posted the pictures, and she said, "MAMA!! I've been really busy this week!!!" :heeheehee FTR, she's not upset about the thread, or I would take them down.

Her side IS usually the neater one. I just happened to walk in on a particularly bad day. OH, and I did find out the reason why there aren't sheets on Hannah's bed: Apparently SweetPea (Hannah's chihuahua) ate one of those Hershey bars and threw up on the bed last night. She had to get up in the middle of the night and strip the bed. Food in the room, food in the room!!! :foottap

That still doesn't explain why Sarah has no sheets. LOL!!!

(I'm cleaning in here right now.)