Much better!
My challenge with keeping the girls' room clean, other than the fact that there are two people sharing a medium sized bedroom, and they're both young, is fairness. Sweet Pea doesn't make nearly as much of a mess in there as her little sister Babydoll. She's not home as much, the things she plays usually are fairly contained to begin with, and she truely wants to keep her room clean (once I clean it). Babydoll will destroy this room in a matter of minutes, but is just not able to clean it all up by herself. The only way she can get any picking up done in there is for me to be in there telling her where to put things, which I usually don't have time to do, or don't take the time to do. When I send them in to clean it up together, Sweet Pea will attempt to pick up while Babydoll finds toys to play with and gets right in her big sister's way. This of course frustrates Sweet Pea who ends up yelling at Babydoll, which of course frustrates me! By the way, I hate when they fight. They don't fight very often but when they do it makes me wish we had some padded cells down in the basement for me to put them in... or put myself in for that matter! But I don't have a padded cell... excuse me while I go find some padding.
Have a wonderful monday everyone, and a terrific week!
3 comments:
I like your new wall paper!
My vote is for Baby Doll to have her room picked up and clean by the time Sweat Pea gets home from school. And they both have to have it picked up before they go to bed at night.
So glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. I have 3 boys ages 5,3, and 1. The scenario you described between your two girls easily could have been written about my two oldest. The bickering drives me crazy! One solution we've come up with to stop the 3 year old from playing while the 5 year old does all the work, is to have them take turns. One sits in the hallway while the other cleans up one category of toys. Then they switch. I usually assign categories based on what's easiest for my 3 year old to sort. For example he's better at sorting the stuffed animals from everything else than he is sorting the regular figures from the take-apart figures which go in two separate boxes. It's not perfect, but it usually works.
We've also tried turning it into a game. I've come up with lots of different clean up games (they especially like racing ones) and those usually work well but do require more of my time and attention.
Of course, nothing gets them more motivated than when I actually sit in the room while they clean. When I can, I'll bring my laptop in with me and catch up on email or type a quick blog post while keeping one eye on their work and issuing the occasional instruction.
I absolutely refuse to be their maid. If they clean their rooms they get paid (usually ten cents). If I have to clean their room because it's too late for them to do it and we're expecting guests, I'll take my "pay" (again, ten cents) out of their allowance jars. They don't like it when mommy gets paid, and they loving earning money for their jars so they usually get it done before I have to step in.
Woops that should have been "room" not "rooms". All 3 boys share a room.
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