Author Archives: Jen

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.