This is the million dollar question! Is it a bedroom or a total tip??? I am led to beleive that it is MEANT to be a bedroom BUT it looks like the local council tip/waste dump! I told the boys (9 & 12) to tidy it this morning, they came down with armfuls of washing (supposedly dirty, yet some was folded) and then a while later came back down and said they had done it, I believed them (more fool me!) and I said they could play on the Wii (mine!).
When I next went upstairs I decided to stick my head in their room to check if it was tidy and they had picked everything up off the floor, and yes I could now see the floor which I couldn't before (and no it wasn't piled on the bed like pinterest pic. lol) BUT I could also see a nice pile of "stuff" sticking out from under the bed. There was clothes both clean and dirty screwed up with toys and games and books thrown in for good measure, not to mention the random lego bricks on the floor! So I did what most mothers would do drag all of it out from under the bed and dump it in a heap in the middle of the floor and told them to get off my Wii and get upstairs to sort it out - they had 20minutes!
This was part of the pile I pulled from under the bed:
They seem to get distracted very easily whilst tidying up - they find things that were deemed "lost" and start playing or they get into a fight over "whose mess it is anyway" or "that's mine!" and start shouting at each other as "the others not helping". This causes me to get even more worked up as they are not tidying up their room as I have asked them to!
However, after the battle today I have made a decision there room is now going to be a "no-go zone". I am not going in it unless it's tidy or there is an emergency! There is going to be some rules though, and they have been told them -
1. No food or drink or plates/cups will be allowed upstairs.
2. Clothes WILL be brought downstairs for washing daily.
3. Clean washing WILL be put away in the wardrobe and drawers.
4. Room needs to be tidy if they want friends round
Apart from these they can do what they like - if this means they tread on lego and hurt their feet on the "plastic carpet of bits" their problem. If they have lost game pieces under the bed or on the floor then they cant play their games. If their books get ripped then it's their problem I am not replacing them. If they wish to have a pile of paper work, drawings and magazines on the floor they can. This may sound harsh but they have got to learn and I am fed up of arguments and battles over the state of their room.
I appreciate that they need "their space" and want to have all of their figures set out in "battles" but they need to realize that if they want their friends to come round then their room needs to be half tidy! Neither of the boys are great fans of spiders and bugs and really freak out when they find them in their room, yet they don't seem to believe me when I say that bugs like mess!
