Making Katie take a turn.

We are having the whole family here for Thanksgiving and need the kids’ rooms for guests, which means Katie’s room needed SERIOUS attention. Like more than just being cleaned up…because it smelled. So once it was picked up and cleaned out, we cleaned the carpets. I made her take a turn so she learns how much work it is and will hopefully (?) try to keep it clean. (Yeah I’m not holding my breath.) She was less than thrilled.

Katie’s room part 742.

Well. It’s time. Katie has ignored all requests to clean up her room so it’s being emptied. I even gave her two extras afternoons and she didn’t do a single thing.

I literally scooped piles of shit from her closet, using my feet as rakes because it was legit a foot deep. Including dishes, MY SHOES, actual garbage, and lots of stuff she’s gonna miss.

This is about 1/6 of the pile I kicked out of her closet.

I’m making her sort it now so she can see everything she’s losing.

This was all in her closet. We haven’t even gotten to the rest of the room or under her bed.

She pretty much admitted she thought I was going to pull stuff out and she’d get to pick what she wanted to keep. Hahahahahahahaha I told her she lost that option a long time ago. She’s losing A LOT OF STUFF.

This got Katie grounded.

I had asked her to make sure the bathroom was picked up for the housekeepers. She said it was done. So imagine my surprise when I walked by this morning and saw this disaster.

And I was even more shocked when I looked under the sink (I was shoving stuff in there to quickly get it out of the way).

And these disgusting glasses filled with who knows what.

And this is where she thought it was appropriate to put dishes.

There was more like this but you get the idea.

UGHHH.

I just never expected this.

This is all Katie’s crap I pulled out of the kids’ bathroom closet—I’m just stunned. This was after I’d told her to clean everything up—which apparently she took to mean shove everything behind closed doors.

On the left you’ll see the stack of random containers that ALL had some level of water still in them. Dirty dishes. Snack bags. Water bottles. Garbage. Tupperware.

I just can’t even with this girl.

And then she gets pissed at ME when I make her come back to take care of it.

She got grounded after this. She has GOT to learn she cannot do this.

So this happened.

After way too much 10yo drama of course.

She was supposed to get her room picked up on her own before she went to grandparent camp—and if she didn’t, I was going to go in and clean everything out. Everything. She barely managed to do enough to pass muster.

Upon her return, she had to redo everything (she had just shoved everything everywhere). And there was D-RA-M-A because she (of course) didn’t want to do it but she didn’t have a choice as she didn’t want to lose all her things.

If she would just WORK CONSISTENTLY it would get done. But she stops to paint her nails and play with her dolls and everything else under the sun. I eventually went in to help her because I was at my limit…and because she was getting a new queen bed.

We had told her she could get one when her room was clean but of course it has been more than 6 months and she couldn’t do it. So we weren’t planning on doing this AT ALL…but Anna and David were getting rid of their guestroom bed and frame so it was now or never.

You’d think KNOWING a new bed and frame was coming would kick get into gear but no. Still drama and avoiding working on it. So that’s where I stepped in. We took EVERYTHING out of her room. Got huge storage boxes and I just literally pulled crap out of cubby holes and off shelves and dumped it in. There were dirty dishes, plates of food, bottles full of liquid concoctions, mounds of dirty clothes, and my god the garbage. Paper, tissues, empty boxes, empty candy wrappers and snack wrappers galore, clumps of hair, broken crayons and pencils, markers with no tops, and on and on. We took out a full garbage bag and a huge box of recycling.

Then she vacuumed and I steam cleaned the carpet (which has been destroyed—it’s covered in colors and stains and who knows what that she has NOOOOOOOO idea how it happened). Then the frame and mattress.

Now the long slog of bringing everything back in her room (and emptying out the guest room of ALLLLL her junk…while trying to get her to get rid of stuff…and keep her room picked up).

Katie lost almost everything in her room today.

Today Katie was invited to her friend Sophia’s and decided to paint her nails instead of cleaning her room like she’s been asked to do for a week plus multiple times today… while she was obviously supposed to be working on her room.

She has had multiple last-chance warnings about cleaning her room. She knew the consequences.

So Tom and I immediately went up with garbage bags and cleaned it out. Everything just got shoved into bags and Tom gathered all the big stuff (like her new rainbow carpet and cushy chair) and hauled it into the guestroom.

All the crap that was on the floor? Gone.

Clothes, towels, shoes? Gone.

Makeup, Legos, Pokémon cards, games, colored pencils/markers/crayons, books? If it was on the dresser in a mess or on the floor? All gone.

Anything that had been shoved in her closet? Gone.

Brand new clothes she just shoved somewhere instead of putting them away? Gone.

There was sooooo much screaming and pleading and crying. Owen was even crying about it and begging us not to do it because he loves her. But unfortunately she needed to learn we are serious. Eventually she even admitted she didn’t think we’d do it. Now she knows we’re serious.

But we heard it all from her: We are the worst parents ever. We don’t care about anyone. Everyone is going to hate her. She’s going to tell everyone at school about this. She wishes she lived somewhere else. She has the worst life ever. This is the worst day ever. She will hate us forever. We will regret this.

We did tell her she has the power to get everything back—she just has to keep her room clean and we’ll let her pick some stuff. To which she snotted back “Well there’s nothing left in here!” To which we replied “Then it should be easy!”

So this is what the guestroom looks like…again. (You might remember we did this once already. Plus did it once at the last house.) But she’s just not getting it.

Needless to say we are both mentally and physically exhausted after this 1.5 hour-long process.

Katie’s Room: Done

We pulled out two bags of garbage (sooooo much paper and candy wrappers and broken crayons), did about four loads of laundry, and removed two garbage bags of outgrown clothes. I cleaned the carpet TWICE (but alas it will never be clean because Katie loves to play with makeup and dye and markers and God knows what else and it has permanent stains).

She got a new ceiling fan, curtains, and princess netting, plus we finally hung her initials. Tom will eventually build a window seat with bookshelves IF she can keep it picked up. If not, the new rule is “If you don’t keep it picked up, I will remove the things so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Unexpected Room Attacks

I really wasn’t planning on cleaning Katie’s room (even though I desperately wanted to throw every single thing away because she’s really ungrateful). But it happened. I just could not stand this disaster any more. (And moreso because she swears she’s cleaned it and it’s always still a pit.)

  1. Lots of stuff shoved in the closet. I pulled out about five bath towels.
  2. I have no idea why this stuff was even in her room! Christmas cupcake wrappers and toothpick flags?!
  3. All the clothes we pulled out from all the little hidey holes she shoved stuff into.
  4. Just a regular shot of her room.
  5. Yes, a partially eaten donut. Rock hard. There’s not supposed to be food in the bedrooms for this very reason.
  6. More random stuff shoved into a drawer.
  7. Two bags of candy for my work that she didn’t have permission to eat.
  8. And why put a bed sheet in the drawer in your room where it goes…when you can shove it in another completely random drawer?
  9. And everything that was stuffed in just three drawers of her dresser.

We both worked in there for hours. We did all the laundry (at least 4-5 loads—which she had assured us all her laundry was done), picked up all the toys and crap, tossed all the garbage, organized things, and created two boxes of crap for her to go through and sort. If she doesn’t want to, it’s going straight into the garbage. This is her LAST chance. If she can’t keep it remotely picked up, she’s losing things. I hope she’s having fun at grandparent camp because life is changing when she gets home. I told Tom if he ever wanted to be a drill sergeant, now is going to be the time.

Where we ended the first day.

And when we moved the nightstand…

MORE SHIT THAT HAD BEEN SHOVED UNDERNEATH

Sidenote: I did run across these. Cue ugly cry.

But lest you think we’re just picking on Katie…Owen’s room is getting cleaned out, too. I didn’t move from my initial position (between his desk and the bed) for almost two hours—there was so much crap shoved and crammed in/on/around/behind/under his desk/bed/drawers I wanted to scream. I mean I was duly impressed…but I wanted to scream.

After we’d spent hours working.

Swim shirt and bathing suit he couldn’t find for weeks? Under the bed. A pack of winter thermal shirts? Desk drawer. Missing laundry bags? Under his bed. All the school notebooks I’d asked him to find that he claimed were gone? Everywhere. Dirty clothes? Everywhere. Candy wrappers? Everywhere.

Lots of things shoved in his nightstand that he’s been missing. Plus garbage of course.
Detritus under the big Lego bag! It’s neverending!

And of course Katie notes!

I took out two bags of garbage, a bag of recycling, and did four loads of dirty laundry (when he said it was all done) including about six bath towels and 83 socks. I picked up approximately 712 Lego pieces, 128 Pokémon cards, 300 random playing cards and other assorted game pieces, a shoebox of markers/pens/pencils, and about 13 spiral school notebooks that have 2% schoolwork and 98% drawings in them. I steam cleaned the carpet and half-heartedly dusted. Oh, and Tom put up a new ceiling fan!

Done!

Life will sure be different for him post-grandparent camp as well.

I realize most of this is par for the course for kids and kids their age but I just. couldn’t. any. longer. I don’t mind a little mess or being unorganized. But both rooms were flat out disgusting.

Stay tuned.

Katie’s room cleanout saga

So I forgot to mention…Katie’s room got fully cleaned out about a week ago.

We had given her chance after chance (after chance) to get it picked up even a little. No it didn’t have to be perfect…but I couldn’t even make it to her bed without stepping on who knows what so I was just D.O.N.E. done. We finally gave her the final ultimatum on a Friday night. We reminded her multiple times throughout the weekend. Reminded her she was going to lose everything if she didn’t make a dent.

She kept putting it off and putting it off. So Sunday afternoon I gave her one last chance. And when she decided that continuing to lay on the basement couch and do nothing was her best choice…it was time. I grabbed the roll of garbage bags and off I went.

There wasn’t much sorting—everything from the tops of her dressers got swept into a bag. Clothes from the floor? In a bag. Toys? Bag. She made it upstairs about three minutes behind me and I already had about two bags full.

She proceeded to sit on her bed and bawl. Not even making any move to, you know, pick anything up or put anything away.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!” You know why. We’ve asked you to pick up your room for a month now. I reminded you all weekend and you didn’t do anything. We warned you what would happen—and you saw us do this to Owen’s room so you knew we were serious. This is happening because you made bad decisions.

Tom had been napping but all the drama woke him up, so then he started helping. I think it took us about 45 minutes to get it cleaned out. We did sort some stuff like Legos and took out a full bag of garbage. We found a pile of dishes. Innumerable candy wrappers. Clean clothes mixed with dirty clothes. And under everything? Horrible stains on the carpet that she had NO CLUE what it was from.

So this is about what it looked like when we were done. Bed, dressers, desk, chair, mirror, bookshelf with books, and some toys.

I wanted to take out more but I was mentally and physically exhausted. She was not happy that she lost her nightlight and Alexa. I told her if she had been that worried about it, she should have picked it up.

And then, for as upset as she was, after we were done, she was downstairs laughing and having fun with Owen. Like nothing ever happened.

Fast forward to the next day and I don’t remember exactly what triggered it, but I’m sure it was a combination of her sassy I-can’t-believe-she’s-not-a-teenager mouth and more bad behavior… after I spent the entire day trying to get those unknown stains up and failing…but I went up again and removed even more stuff. She lost the makeup mirror, most of her books, more toys, and anything that was on the floor (you thought she’d have learned that lesson, but no).

In the end, I had taken out about the equivalent of 10 garbage bags. Here it all is stacked in the guest room.

And you know what? She really doesn’t give two craps about any of it. She hasn’t asked for any of it back…except for her Alexa.

She knows why she lost it. She knows she has to earn it back.

I have made her do all the laundry we pulled out—but it all goes back in the guest room (she was allowed to pick two pieces per load to keep).

We’ve told her she can earn some other things back but she hasn’t even cared enough to attempt that. This includes Christmas presents she just got!

Of course her job is to keep her room picked up now—which shouldn’t be hard because it’s literally empty, right? Ha. She still manages to have her floor almost covered every day.

So we have no idea what’s going to happen. Do we just really get rid of everything? Make her sort through it? Make her earn stuff back?

Sigh.

This took entirely too long.

THIS IS SO PAINFUL. This literally took her HOURS AND HOURS to do. And she still didn’t even get the few things done that I asked.

Pick up ALL the clothes. ALL. From everywhere. On the floor, behind the door, between the dressers, in the closet. Everything. Every single thing. Put them all in a pile in the hallway.

I couldn’t have been more clear. But all I hear is OKAAAAAY MOM. I KNOOOOOW MOM. But she picks up some of the things and thinks she’s done?! I demonstrate how to do it. I explain again I mean every. single. thing. And still not done. I mean she says she did it…but when I check it’s obviously not done. And it took an hour or more—not minutes. Because she starts playing. Or needs to take a break. Or plays with the cat.

Pick up all the garbage off the floor. Same as the clothes, just all the little bits of crap—tissues, broken crayons, wads of hair, pieces of ripped blanket, scraps of paper, clothes tags she cut and just left on the floor. ALL OF IT.

Again, she says she did it…but there’s still just so much.

Pick up all the Legos, dolls, makeup, and put them in their designated bins.

I even got out her bins for her. And she did some. Over hours.

I had a serious heart to heart talk with her about it all. She knows we are serious about emptying her room because she saw us do it to Owen. She has no reason other than she just doesn’t want to do it (like the homework). But she doesn’t want to lose her stuff. She says she feels like we want them to have less stuff like we did as kids. I tell her that’s not true—we want them to have more than we did (and they do!)—but they need to take care of it.

This. Is. Exhausting.

I don’t think my room was ever this bad.

I know I’m not supposed to care what their rooms look like but I CANNOT handle this. I am ready to clean it all out myself. As in empty it.

There were basically two schools of thought on Facebook:

  1. It’s her room. Let her live with it.
  2. OH HELL NO.

It’s just so frustrating. We’ve tried random and various rewards and prizes and money and everything is glorious for 2-3 days and then it stops. We’ve tried chore charts and boards and tokens and iPhone apps. Nothing works. Part of it is we just don’t have the energy to police everything. We also do it strong for a few days and then we miss a day and then it all goes to hell.

We do make them pick up their rooms every so often—they are supposed to do at least 5 minutes a day but they don’t even do that. Her room was decently picked up less than a week ago. 🙁

I have also bought a nice kid book that tells HOW to clean it. I have walked her through it (and done it with her) multiple times. She knows. And every time I try to help her or guide her, I get “I KNOOOOOOW MOM” but she doesn’t do it.

She did recently have a totally clean slate as we just moved in two month ago. But it’s pretty much looked like this since Day 3. I have told her she will not get a nice pretty new girly room (we are prepped to totally Pinterest her room) unless it gets and stays clean. And again, it works for 2-3 days and then…this. We moved at least five garbage bags of stuff we removed from her room already that she literally SOBBED over but hasn’t given a second thought to since.

Owen HAS lost everything in his room one time already (at the last house) and his isn’t quite this bad but it’s bad enough. But they know I’m serious when I say I WILL do it.

Tonight I found this mess in my sink.

Both kids claimed complete innocence—like VEHEMENTLY denied it. It wasn’t a cream of mine or even a smell I recognized. I was thinking we had squatters in the attic or something (I can thank Anna for that).

Then muscle memory came back and it hit me: diaper rash cream. Which we still have around since, well, kids can’t wipe and butts get red. So then I went to their bathroom and yep, the brand new box was open and the tube was missing. Well of course she sees me in there and runs right in. Long story short she “remembers where it is” and yep, same smell. And that guilty look. Man.

So she only admitted to it since I gave her immunity (because I was honestly freaked out thinking about squatters). She said she was just playing with it and then it made a mess and she didn’t want to get in trouble. Like we aren’t ever going to figure it out?! (And I’m still not sure why she was in my bathroom instead of hers.)

We have also told both of them that it’s not the THING so much as the LYING about the thing. But she lies like this ALL. THE. TIME. I am trying to find a counselor to help (because there are other issues, too) but in the meantime, we have no idea what to do or how to handle this.

Isn’t parenting fun?

This does not make a happy mama.

So….this is how Katie left the front porch (and driveway, too!) today while she’s off gallivanting around the neighborhood. After, you know, we’ve told them 2,638 times to PUT SHIT AWAY. So not only has their shit exploded inside the house these days (as we’re trying to organize and clean to move next month), but shit has now exploded onto my front porch.

They skip steps all the time. Never finish anything without prompting. Because they’re kids. But it’s just sooo frustrating because it seems like it’s all I’m ever saying! I wanted to throw all of this away but Tom intervened and sent Owen to bring her home. She apologized (but it won’t change anything) and then she “cleaned” it up by stacking it all up under the bench. Sigh,

And this is what the sink looks like after I told both kids to load the dishwasher. TWICE. After I’ve told them every single time when they load the dishwasher that they need to check the sink. But heaven forbid I didn’t follow behind them and watch them so they didn’t do it.

Oh oh oh! And this is what the living room always looks like because they pull all the pillows and blankets off. AND LEAVE THEM ON THE FLOOR.

Answer: How do you get burrs out of human hair?

Question: Things I didn’t expect to have to Google tonight?

Katie came home from playing in the woods with neighbor kids with a bunch of burrs in her hair. Of course I immediately saw the work involved and she was basically like “Oh what? This is a problem?”

Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared at first glance, but it wasn’t fun with the olive oil picking bits of prickly Burr off her head and then showering to wash her hair at bedtime.

That said, I do hope I put the fear of the devil in her about it happening again.