cleanup and age differences

Faith and Abby are old enough now that saying “Everything that’s still on the floor in there in 15 minutes is going in the trash” no longer seems cruel. Before, like last year, saying that elicited much stress and made me feel like the biggest jerk in the world. Now, it gets me a slightly panicked look, a cry of “ABBY! COME HELP ME!” and a hell of a lot less stuff to pick up – and no pain and anguish when I pitch it.

8 thoughts on “cleanup and age differences

    1. That’s not bad either though. If you throw it all away then you don’t have it to clean up again. If you don’t want to actually throw it away you can just bag it up and see what happens.

  1. Lol I’ve been doing that for well over a year now with B and J. Now I feel kind of bad but they get the job done quickly.

  2. my folks did this when we were kids (there were five of us) and it worked so well! i think it’s a great way to get some kid butts into gear.

    1. I think the great thing about it is it really does just kick-start them. They don’t clean up all of it. They’re happy to only pick up what they want and leave the rest for me. If they are honestly still trying to tidy and it’s been 15 minutes, I let them keep at it. I’m not militarily minded. I just want our common areas usable, you know?

      So I agree, it definitely works with SOME kids. By no means all! If it caused wailing and rending and gnashing of teeth I wouldn’t do it.

  3. I used to do that with the older boys and Linds with a shop vac….I know I’m horrible
    Linds would wait until the last second and try to pick up everything before I sucked it up. She was always protective of shoes before toys but when I sucked up a pair of underwear she had a cow! She didn’t know that I emptied the vac and put everything back in her room. She thought she lost it forever. She then learned how to unplug it before I could suck anything up….smarty pants
    Now if Robert says anything left on the floor when I get home goes in the dumpster (and he will throw everything away) the girls just leave what they don’t want anymore so they don’t have to pick it up

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