Lesson Learned

The lesson I've learned over the last month or more is that kids really don't care whether their room is a disaster. I grew tired of always reminding the kids to put away their things throughout the house so I decided to pick my battles in the main rooms only. What paid the price is their bedrooms, Carley's in particular. Josh is older and quite a bit neater. After a two month strike against bedroom duty, I've caved. Carley apparently has more staying power than me when it comes to messy bedrooms.


I'm completely embarrassed to admit it (obviously not so much that I won't post about it!) but this is what Carley's room looked like for the last month.


Please don't judge me harshly. I hated this view so much that I often kicked things out of the way to close the door. I really hoped that she would get to a point of possibly picking up something on her own. She used to clean her own room as a three-year-old. Why can't she do it now?


After our bit of Spring cleaning yesterday, I kept the motion going. Carley, with my guidance and assistance, tackled her room today.


And we finished. Completely.

My new strategy is to set my phone alarm to go off every evening at 6:00 for a quick clean-up rather than waiting until bedtime when we're all tired and crabby. Hopefully the new plan will work. We'll see.