I May Never Give Them Their Stuff Back

My mother was an obsessive compulsive cleaner. I grew up in a house so clean, I was barely allowed to live in it. My mother loved to clean. She lived to clean. Her whole life was about organizing and cleaning. She ironed my jeans, for crying out loud.

Despite being raised with cleaning influences thrust upon me from infancy, I have to really work at being clean and tidy. I really don't enjoy cleaning. I find it mundane and boring. I've had to really work at keeping a clean house because it doesn't come naturally to me. I have to make myself do chores.

Gregory needs absolutely no prompting from me to be clean. It comes naturally to him. He likes to be organized and tidy. Watch him in this video. He just invents ways to clean.



He seems to find great joy in watching stuff get clean. I get great joy out of sitting and watching him clean.



My girls are natural pigs. They get absolutely NO joy out of cleaning. They are the POLAR opposites of Gregory. It's like the Odd Triplets, starring Felix and two Oscars. So getting them to do anything regarding chores or cleaning is met with extreme opposition.

I feel you girls, but someday you'll thank me for my persistence.

When I emptied their room out, you've never seen such hysteria and crying. They were bawling and pleading and crying. Fortunately, I am immune to crying and tantrums, so I just ignored them and bagged their stuff up. Three days later, I think I did them a favor. Honestly.

They just don't seem to have the ability to keep that much stuff organized. They need a lot of work. It doesn't come naturally to them.

So we are starting small and we are going to work our way back up. The first day, Amanda earned back a purse with beads in it. We designated a space for it and she managed to get it back into it's spot. Sarah got nothing the first day. She threw a fit when it was time to make her bed. Oh, so sad, you get nothing if you do that.

Yesterday, they took showers, got dressed, and brought their sheets into the laundry room to be washed without any fussing. So Sarah earned back her favorite stuffed animal and Amanda earned back her Hannah Montana dress-up outfit, which she wore all day, as if I might rip it off her body and take it away from her.

Even though Sarah professes to love that Blackie dog more than life itself, it was no where to be found at bedtime last night.

Oh, so sad. That's not staying very organized, now is it?

I have no idea how this experiment will play out since I'm just winging it, but I can tell you this, having the girls room clean and not having all their crap all over my house has brought my stress level WAY WAY WAY down.

So maybe they'll never get all their stuff back. Stay tuned.