Messy Messy Messy

The messiest in my house is also my daughter- She knows better than leaving a mess anywhere but in her playroom- She cannot jump from project to project until the one she was working on is cleaned up- A lot of times she will take what she is doing and put it in the playroom in a pile- This drives me crazy! About once a week she spends an hour in the playroom picking things up! If she doesn’t she loses her allowance for the week- her bedroom is usually pretty clean- it is the playroom that is messy!

housekeeping is pretty hard to actually be able to teach, i think that this is something that takes a long time to cultivate. perhaps you could start things off by providing lots of container space for your daughter to keep her stuff, and force her to spend every weekend or so to take some time to clean her room and you could do it together with her.

The messiest person in my houe...is my Mother...but since she had an aneursym 13 years ago...I am forgiving about it...she can not help it... When my daughter was younger...her room was always worse than the boy's rooms.......she lost her priviledges and got the pleasure of sitting in that pig stye until it was cleaned.....URGHHHHHH Also, when the reached an age where I knew that they were able (5-6)....then any toys left strown throughout the house went into a bag...there it sat for a minimum of 24 hours the 1st time, 72 hours the 2nd...and so on until they figured out that if they valued that toy/game...article of clothing ......then it belonged in their rooms....not all over the house for me to puck up.... It works....I know....I have raised 3 children to grown and have a 5 yr. old who currently is missing 3 toys because they were left in my living room after bedtime....plus I have 7 grandchildren....I just refuse to spend my life screaming the same thing over and over...I am sure you know what I mean!! Teaching responsibility and "taking care" of your things is always a valuable lesson....the earlier the better. Wishing you the best in dealing with this...you will need it....