The impossible meaning: getting my kids to pick up their stinking room. For four days now, I have said, “Please clean up your room. Your friends are coming over. You need to pick up. Your room needs to be clean before breakfast/lunch/dinner/bath/bedtime.” And still I cannot walk across their floor.
It is a small room. Emma and Eleanor share this particular problem space. Ava is getting too old for loads of toys and her room stays mostly clean now that I keep the little ones out of it.
I have had enough. Tonight they were all in that room and when I opened the door, the door had to push things out the way in order to open. I was livid. I said, ”This is RIDICULOUS!!!! Clean this room RIGHT NOW!!!!” I waited 5 minutes and thought about what I was going to do if, as I suspected would be the case, they didn’t clean the room.
I walked back in. I had many many plastic bags in my hands. They were on the floor playing, just as they were when I left them. “Everybody OUT!!!! Get OUT of this room this minute!”
They saw the bags. Screaming and kicking and begging commenced but I was not moved. I forced them out and closed the door. I loaded every single toy on the floor, on the bed, or in the wrong bin into the bags. Needless to say, that left all of two toys in the closet. That’s right. ALMOST EVERY SINGLE TOY THEY HAVE WAS SOMEWHERE ON THAT FLOOR.
I had already decided not to throw them out or give them away. I cannot afford to replace them, nor do I care to entertain them more than I already do because they have no toys. And bored kids cause trouble. No. I put them in Helena’s nursery. I told them that they may have them back, one bag a day as long as they were willing to put all the toys in that bag away once it was returned to them. At that rate it will take them 2 weeks to earn back all of their toys. By that time, I will have put baby gates up in their closets and they are going to have to ask me to get things out and they are going to have to put things away before more things can be had.
Damn it, I am going to win this Toy War one battle at a time.
January 14, 2009
January 14, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Whoa. Way to go. You ARE a professional! No one could take care of your kids better than you and their dad (referring to your last post.) You are really making a wise decision to mother your kids. And since you can swing it economically, and you feel no real tug to work in a different way, why would you cater to some notion that you’re supposed to have a “career”?
January 15, 2009 at 7:03 am
You have my empathy. The cleaning battle is a long one!!
Also, I am so proud of you for deciding to not worry about a career for now! You are amazing. Whenever you’re ready to jump back into the working world, whatever field you decide to enter will be so lucky to have you.
January 16, 2009 at 3:55 am
Awesome response to the critical situation. We’ve had a lot of success with the “5 minute clean up” using a timer a-la Flylady. There isn’t much Flylady stuff that survived the 3rd kid, but cleaning piecemeal and 5 minute clean-up done every night before baths has kept the toy war in peace time territory. Of course, I have a rule follower for an eldest child, so I don’t know how well it generalises.
January 16, 2009 at 9:16 am
Damn, how I wish the 5 minute rule would work! Interestingly, the girls didn’t ask for any toys back yesterday and the way that they played sans-toys was so fascinating. I am thinking about thinning out permanently (again).
January 16, 2009 at 2:24 pm
p.s. I didn’t mean for the last sentence in my comment above to sound at all snarky. It is supposed to sound super-ultra-exceptionally-outstandingly-unequivocally supportive. You are obviously someone who has a rich and active intellectual life, and you’re in your 20’s (I think), so by the time the kids are more independent (when the littlest is about 8?) it’ll be easy for you to make a wise decision about what you want to do next. As a teacher, I can corroborate that it is a tremendously emotionally-consuming job, and the reasons I’ve been successful in continuing to teach after having my own kids is that 1) my husband works part-time, so they are either getting parent-attention from him or from me 2) we enjoy being with our kids so much that we hardly do anything without them (being older parents, we’ve witnessed our friends’ kids grow up quickly, so we have the perspective that this time of their childhood -when they want to spend time with us- can go by quickly; it’s definitely not a permanent situation!) 3) I teach (7th and 8th grade) at a K-8 one block from our home, and our kids are in 2nd grade there, so having them in the same building and knowing their teacher as a colleague is extraordinarily wonderful. So my unusual circumstances, where there’s a pretty seamless transition from home to work, have enabled me to keep working and not feel wrenched away from my kids. With your creativity and brains, you’ll be able to sculpt something similarly satisfying for yourself. Just keep thinking about it subconsciously, and it’ll come! As long as you have time, you’re okay. (When I was trying to figure out if I should continue in academic science or become a teacher, I had a series of powerful dreams which loudly said “be a teacher”, and it was definitely the right thing for me to do!)
January 16, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Aina, I didn’t take your comment to be at all snarky! But thanks for coming back and sharing your experience. It’s good to know that not everyone who works feels pulled in a million directions. I don’t think John would ever consider part-time, unfortunately, as that would make a huge difference for me in my decision making. He doesn’t feel the desire to parent more than he already does. It’s just not for everyone, I guess! And I have about 2.5 more months to be in my 20s.
January 16, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Spook! I did almost the same thing with my kids’ rooms the other day. All the same preamble as well. I went upstairs, plastic bags in hand and booted them out of their rooms and bagged stuff up. Half of it is still in “time out.”
January 17, 2009 at 10:25 am
I am sorry everyone else is in this boat, but selfishly I am glad that I am not the only one! I need to put down the Martha Stewarts and remember that most children do NOT maintain a montessori-quality bedroom!
January 18, 2009 at 4:46 am
Actually, reading your comment about them playing without toys – I suspect the reason 5 minute clean up works in our house is that my kids don’t play with many toys. They have heaps, they just don’t play with them…
This annoys me no end – I get told all the toys are boring. The train track, and a few cars are the only things which regularly get used. They literally can’t get into bed when they’ve played with trains, so it has to get cleaned up! At least you’ve managed to provide toys your kids like.