Tired of the mess

It is a constant battle with the girls. I want them to clean their room, and they don't want to do it. Should be easy to deal with, shouldn't it?

Yeah. It should be. But it's not.

I hear it all the time from so many people - "You just need to make them do it."

Yeah, right. How?

If I tell them to do it, they'll start, get distracted, and quit.
If I stand over them and supervise, the boys will get into trouble behind my back - I'm only one person and I can't be everywhere in the house at the same time.
If I try to force the issue, it gets ugly, and drama ensues - not just normal drama, but custody-jeopardizing drama (yes, I'm serious).

They are only here half of the time. And realistically, they're not even here that much because of church (with their father) and basketball. Do I want to spend the little bit of time that I have with them trying to get them to clean their room? No. I want to spend time as a family.

Quite frankly, the bedroom situation sucks. I try to get them to do it, and they don't. There are many other reasons other than the ones listed above, but those are the basics. The Dude has tried to help, but he's not here all of the time and even if he was - it's not his responsibility to make sure that the kids clean their rooms. I appreciate that he helps, but I don't expect him to do it.

I warned the girls for the past week or so - I told them that if they didn't clean it up, I was going to do it for them. They know that when I say "do it for them" that it means that things will disappear. I don't clean to be nice - I clean to get rid of crap.

This is what I started out with today.

I also wanted to strip their beds, and when I did, I was disgusted by the amount of bedding that they had. Their room is not cold at night - there is no excuse for this. I found blankets that I know that I've washed lately, but they were balled up on the floor or on the bed and I couldn't tell if they were still clean or not, so guess what? Yep. I had to wash it all.

And the laundry. I just did their laundry, but this is what I found in various places around their room - but none of it was actually IN their laundry basket to start with.

So. The laundry is being done. The bedding is being washed. All of the crap that was on the floor has been sorted - the trash is in a trash bag and the rest of it is going out into the garage. It's going to disappear. They may or may not get it back at some point in time. I didn't get rid of anything important, like library books or things for school. But all of the random crap - markers, pencils, notebooks, journals, magazines, beading kits...things like that are all going away. The extra blankets are being put away. If they don't have a bunch of crap to spread out all over the place, then they can't make that much of a mess again, right?

The beds aren't completely made yet, but this is what I ended up with (I still have to finish laundry).

Now, I get to wait until Wednesday to see just how mad they are when they see that I did it.

They'll get over it.