The Jacobson Kids and the Messy Room

Ever read the book The Berenstein Bears and the Messy Room? That book kind of described my life for the past good while. I sympathized with Momma Bear so much. I just wanted to take a box and start throwing toys into it for the trash man, and threatened to do so on more than one occasion. The girls would fight over who was cleaning, who wasn't, who was supposed to be picking up what, and how it was "Tooooooo big a mmmeeesssss!" every night. So yesterday, because the room was messy and because we had not had a chance to clean it up the night before due to being out late for FHE, I told the girls at 10:15 am that they needed to clean their room. At 10:45 I said as soon as they were done they could have lunch. At 11:00 I said if they could get done quickly they could have chocolate milk with their lunch. At 11:15, I called Doug and told him my plan. 4 toys, 4 stuffed animals, 4 dress ups, 4 books, and that was it! Everything else was going into storage until further notice. I just couldn't handle the screaming, both on their part and on mine. I couldn't handle the stress, the contention that lasted well into the night that made bedtime miserable! The girls were missing story time more and more often, which is something that I really enjoy with my kids, and it was getting cancelled too often because bedroom cleanup took 30-45 minutes, and only with parental supervision (please read as breaking up fights, over coming tantrums, or wading through both to make the work get done). No bueno. So I hatched a plan to limit the mess, thereby limiting the whining and clean up. I mean a room can only get so messy with a few toys in it right? And it wasn't like the mess being made was from toys being played with. Usually things got dumped out to find other things, or collections of odds and ends would end up all over the house, only to be dragged back upstairs by me to not the put away by my kids. Anyway, back to "the plan." I presented it to Doug....well, I told him what I was going to do and it would be great if he would get on board but it was happening anyway. I might have told him "the plan" in the heat of the moment, aka right after failed room cleaning #110000001. Anyway, the point is that he agreed with me, but wanted to take the sting out of the situation for the girls. I wanted to accomplish the plan in stealth, where it was done while Evelynn was a school and then break the news to the girls. Looking back that was probably a little vindictive of me, so it was lucky that it didn't go down that way. Doug suggested a family meeting. I thought this would lead to more tears and screaming, but he insisted, so I went along. He bought the book The Messy Room and started our meeting reading that to the girls. Then he had them talk about cleaning their room, what was hard about it, what they didn't like about it, etc. Then he had him and I talk about how it makes US feel when the girls don't clean their room. They took it rather well. Then he presented "the plan." We were going to clean out and throw away a lot of the stuff that had accumulated in the room over time, and get rid of toys we don't use etc. After this process, the girls would be allowed to choose a few of each category of toys, then the rest would be put in a box and put in the basement for a while, where we could trade toys every few months. They took this news much much better than I expected. In the end, we kept all the books except the ones which were broken/missing pages, three toys/stuffed animals for their beds to sleep with, three dress ups each, and two toy sets each (like their magnetic dress up dolls) and then one set of toys they chose together (they chose dishes and food for their kitchen). I couldn't believe how much stuff we threw out though! I mean, we've only lived in this house for a year, but there were so many little junk toys to get rid of, like 2/3 of a puzzle, broken dolls, McDonald's toys etc and also lots, and lots, and lots of paper! This I blame on my crafty daughter Evelynn, but we also discovered with the paper like 20 crayons, so that was nice. The room is much more bare, but I think, hope, pray, that this is a good change. We told the girls they were not allowed to complain of a "big mess" anymore since we ensured that this could not be possible. Even with all the toys and dress ups on the floor, it would all fit in two milk crates (which is what we use to store toys in the closet). Bottom line of the story is that I am grateful for my husband who recognized the strain this problem was placing on me, and so didn't shoot down my master plan as too harsh, but instead tempered it to make it more palatable to the kids. It's so nice to have someone work side by side with you in raising kids. Today the kids played all morning with their toys. I think it helped a lot to have the toys all put back together so they could find all the pieces. I'll update later how the experiment is going, but for now, here's to simplifying our lives!