A couple of weeks ago, as I was running late (of course) to meet all of the other leaders and young women at the church for Girl's Camp, I cleaned out Steve's trunk and just dumped it on the couch (feeling slightly guilty for doing so) before I dumped all of my camping gear in the back of our tiny little Yaris and left my husband alone with three kids for a few days.
In that pile was a set of vinyls Steve had bought a while ago and forgotten about--Thomas the Train vinyls for Clark, and Avengers vinyls for Jack.
We decided to use these vinyls as motivation to help the boys keep their room cleaner, and so we told them: "If you keep your room clean for THREE days, we'll repaint your room and put these awesome stickers on the walls!!"
We even got super motivated and helped them clean their room spotless (I even vacuumed!) that night.
That was two weeks ago, and their floor still isn't visible.
Sunday, Steve and I helped them clean again, pulling out the vinyls and reminding them how AWESOME their room would look with those cool stickers on the walls.
Yesterday, I got up with them, and the room was still clean. I praised them with all of the enthusiasm I could muster at 6:00, then I sent them back into their room to play while I tried to get a little more shut-eye (my first mistake).
By the time I went in there a little while later, they had taken three of the drawers out of their dresser, dumped the significant amount of clothes inside said drawers out all over the floor, and broken on of the drawers apart (thank you, Ikea furniture).
Steve was home for the day, and so he and I got to work trying to get them to clean it up. As we did so, we tried (again) to understand why they did what they did.
"Why? Why did you make the mess when you knew we would be repainting your room soon!?!?!" I growled through my clenched teeth.
Clark just stared blankly, and Jack attempted to explain.
"Well, I was trying to climb inside the dresser, and the drawers just accidentally fell out!"
"You were climbing INSIDE the dresser?" I was flabbergasted (don't know why--at this point nothing should surprise me anymore...we've already had to remove their old bed frames and toy box for this very reason).
"Yeah! I do it all the time! It's my cave." Jack was matter-of-fact, as if it was a perfectly average activity to hide inside a dresser while pretending it's a cave.
Needless to say, the now-broken dresser is going out of their room. Our next attempt is going to be shelves in the closet--you know, the kind you get at Lowes that are supposed to be for hundreds of pounds worth of tools. And yes, I already see the "Mount Everest explorers" use of the shelves. But at least these we can hide when they get broken.
Comments
You're amazing!
You're amazing!
...I still haven't figured out how to get kids to keep their rooms clean. We'll do great at having a 10 minute tidy up each night before bed for a while (it really doesn't take long to tidy up...especially if you don't keep toys organized and just dump them all in a toy box. Kids don't want to organize! It takes too long!) ANYHOW...we'll do great for a while....and then we totally slack off and the boys room (which is the worst at getting messy FAST) will start to smell weird and then we will clean up again.
Someday in like 18 years, my house will stay tidy and I wont feel like I am constantly cleaning or trying to get people to clean. But then you will probably hear me telling you how sad it is to have the kids gone. ;)