Day 77- Clean Sweep

I know that kids should be taught to clean up after themselves and develop good habits for the future, but these are MY kids were talking about, so there's just no hope for them. Every few weeks I go through Little Man's room (where they all play and leave their stuff everywhere) and have the kids help me clean up. Usually that involves me cleaning and them whining about how long I'm taking. Yeah, so I let Little Man's room get a bit out of hand and for at least 2 weeks I've had to make a foot wide path through all the crap on the floor just to kiss the kids goodnight. (Sweetie Pie insists on keeping her big girl room downstairs, yet she never sleeps in there because apparently she prefers to sleep surrounded by a bunch of toys on Little Man's floor)

Last night I finally got sick of inadvertently trying on Barbie's shoes every time I went in there but didn't really want to spend 2 hours trying to get the kids to help at 8pm either. While they were playing in the bath (don't judge, Boo was already asleep and I could see them from the room) I shoveled all the toys, clothes, stray animals, garbage, movies into a giant pile and started sorting. I swear a third of that pile was clothes... The good news is that I found their missing everything, but the bad news is now I have to wash it all.



I made all different piles for Barbies, Polly Pockets, books, blocks, garbage, movies and all the other crap and just started sorting like lightening. This mother of the year told the kids that they needed 5 more minutes in the bath to be "extra clean" when they asked to get out of the bath when in reality I just didn't want them messing up my piles. After I had stretched their patience as far as I could I transferred the piles as closely to their homes as possible and shoved the remainder into a corner of his room and instructed him NOT to touch it without Mama.

Is that wrong? I just don't need him to "help" clean his room when I already have it mostly done. We can always work on the sorting/cleaning/organizing habits next time, right? And until then all the Barbie shoes, Polly Pocket wigs (scary!), and tiny little pieces of anything are 'lost'. Oops! :P Sometimes it's fun to be the boss.