Six weeks into the Purge of ‘08…
…and we have ONE clean room, as long as you don’t look in the closet.
How we got there is the important part — who knew cleaning, purging, and screaming are growth experiences?
I know that I’m not the strictest mommy in the whole wide world…but I’m a stickler for some basics.
- You will have respect for others.
- You will do what you are told and take responsibility.
- You will bathe and sleep and eat with regularity.
- You will be greatly loved and you will know it.
Yup, that’s pretty much it. I don’t have sugar rules. I don’t freak out if my kid doesn’t eat 100% healthy meals. I don’t even have a cow if he watches TV. I just want that by the time he’s grown getting a family of his very own to know those 4 things were the most important things to me.
Today, today, my sweet son is working overtime to push me over the edge of sanity. You see, I asked the impossible of a 4 and a half year old. I asked him to clean his room up. Now, in his defense, he’d gotten many items in the bins I bought him for his toys, but completely ignored his play table that was SO covered there could be NO play what so ever.
He comes out of his room after an HOUR and asks me to check it. (He does this because I’ve told him no TV until his room is clean.) I walk in an faint. For all the boxes, stuff, and MORE stuff, I can not get into his room. I told him that this wasn’t acceptable and please try again. He asked me, politely for help. I may have mentioned that he needed no help to make the mess, but I get it. I thought that he was having trouble sorting his toys, since he doesn’t have labels on the bins and that maybe he needed some guidance. (See, good mommy moment.) I took time and wrote the word and a quick drawing of the items to go in the bin (I broke the stuff down into big groups.) and showed him this fun new matching game.
That lasted 4.2 seconds. He found an item that didn’t match one of his bins and I told him to skip it we would see what he had left after everything else was in bins. This made sense to my 34 year old brain, no sense to the 4 year old. I walked out of the room to get something and he lost it. (In hind sight, I think “help me” was more of a cry for company or to clean his room for him — not sure.)
I walked away briefly and found Prince. We conversed and I declared, “He has too many toys and if he can’t keep his room clean, I’m taking them out of his room.” (I pause to say, that I’m opposed to taking all his toys away forever because I think he needs to learn to earn them back. Not to mention that I like some of his toys and thus, I really want him to have them.)
So, Prince took Duke to lunch for an hour. In that hour, I cleaned out his room. I packed away all but one type of toy (his trains) and when they returned I explained. If he can keep his room clean with just the trains, he may get some of his other toys back. He actually cheered with joy when I told him that there were NO toys in his room except trains.
My grand plan is that every Saturday he will get the choice of picking a new a toy to TRADE the existing room toy with. We will see if this works, but any toy that isn’t requested in a month may get passed along.
I’m more than a little proud of my plan. First I think that it gives Duke responsibilty for his stuff, but helps him gain it as he can handle more. It will keep me off the roof, because part B of the new rules is that any toy not put away at the end of the day will go away for awhile — probably meaning the thing he wants to play with most. Finally, the genius of my plan is that I’m considering the trash I pulled out of his room part of the purge.
Now, I wonder if this plan would work for Prince’s random computer parts in the house?
February 17th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
You can’t trash random computer parts! No, no, no. One never knows when one will need that null modem cable or twisted pair ethernet cable. Or the 4 keyboards. Or the miles of phone and speaker cable. or the dead hulls of 4 computers. or the laptop bag that no longer rolls and has been replaced twice over. No, you can’t get rid of it.**
But, those ps/2 to usb things that come with mice? Yea, chuck those. He won’t even notice
**Actually, that’s my stuff. But, at least it is (mostly) contained in a plastic bin.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
You have a clean room in the house? You’re certainly one up on me, though I do have cleaner carpet after today. I do like those 4 rules – they hit all the bases!
I have to tell you that my 17 YO has the same problems with keeping things put away that Duke does, and she’s not really any better about cleaning up after herself. I like the items into a labelled bin plan, and we have done that before with some (but not all) success. We have had playroom cleanings that involve piles and piles – a pile to go to your room (and be put away!), a pile to ask Mom about, etc.
I like your plan too. And truthfully, I’d give just about anything to toss the 12-condensed to 6-condensed to 3 plastic bins full of random computer and electronic stuff, but I am particularly fond of being able to say, “man, if we only had a ____” and knowing that the answer will almost always be that we have one. Like today, with the cable from the DVD player to the receiver. We had a spare, though it didn’t fix the problem. It did rule out my “bad cable” theory though.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
All I can tell you my friend is that my parents did something similar with my toys. They were constantly packing them up and offing them to some other household. If only they had kept them all, I could’ve made a killing on ebay! It turns out those “junk things that you never play with” were worth something!