When parents are not good role models for their kids when it comes to setting rules and assigning chores for the home that everyone shares, one cannot be surprised when the kids do as little as possible at home.
Not making excuses, but both my husband and I have moms whose homes are very, very clean. My mom will admit that she cannot relax at all in her own home unless the dishes are done, the floors are swept, the bathrooms are cleaned, and the beds are made (just to name a few). I grew up in a home that while always comfortable, we simply did not leave anything out of its place.
Imagine my freedom when I moved out!
Imagine what I vowed when I started to have kids. "I'll never be like my mom when it comes to making my kids do chores."
That's when things have a tendency of biting us in the a$$.
On Thursday, my husband kind of blew his top. He could not find any clean towels anywhere in the house. The towel that had been in our bathroom had disappeared. When he walked into the kids' bathroom upstairs, there were a pile of clothes and towels on the floor.
He went to bed in disgust.
I had Wrestling Fan help gather up some towels and do a load of laundry.
Right before I went to bed, I wrote a note to my wonderful three kidlets (two of which are now adultlets and need to start doing more around the house - but how do I undo twenty years of damage?).
The essence of the note was that if clothes were not picked up and put away from the next afternoon, all clothes found by the afternoon (no clear time specified because they would have waited until the very last millisecond before tearing through the house) would go away to people who would appreciate them.
I grabbed a garbage bag at 7 last night which is so not the afternoon, but I was tired and wonders of wonders, most everything was gone from their bathroom, our laundry room and the couch. I was able to give away some things, but for the most part, any clothes that they valued was gone and "put away" where "put away" equals probably on their bedroom floors.
Oh, and Wrestling Fan, totally earned some major bonus points from me. He swept the floor of the laundry room on his own.
Posts
4 comments:
My kids' rooms would get messy messy messy. But I let them leave their rooms pretty much they way they wanted them as long as they left a fire lane from the bed to the door. Heh. They had to do their own laundry. And they could not leave food or dirty dishes in their rooms because, unlike the mess, the bugs wouldn't just stay in their rooms . . .
I wondered if this plan was ill-advised for their future homes and they'd find themselves on some TV reality show called "Killed By Clutter" or something. But they've grown up to be tidy in their own homes.
Also? I miss having people around who know how to do laundry. I'm going to need to start demanding more of Laura. :-)
Have a great weekend.
We're struggling with this, too. We've come to an agreement that anything left in common areas for more than a day will be removed, either by the owner or by the management. I've also come to putting wet things (towels, bathing suits) left in a heap on the floor in the offender's bed. Let's see how that works....
You've been here and you know how I roll--very messy bedrooms, but you need to make an effort with the common areas. Unless, you'd like to see me turn into a raging beyotch--which has happened enough times that we don't have that much of a problem.
Oh, how I can relate! Both of us grew up in homes much like yours. So, the common areas were kept reasonably neat, but the bedrooms were horrendous. My kids are now grown, married and gone now, One has a messy home like ours was (including the common areas), the other has a a wife who is very neat. I regret not setting a better example - for the sake of their children (and the one very neat DIL). It appears that each generation gets a little worse. UNLESS, like us, they vow to never have the kind of home their parents had.
Post a Comment