I can’t take it anymore! Clean clothes do not belong in the dirty clothes hamper just because it’s easier than putting them on hangers! I’m having nightmares that I’m sinking in a quicksand pit of laundry. Same with the clothes lining the bottom of your closet and stuffed under your bed! Untold candy wrappers (where did you even get that candy? Candy pushers? Seems like a gateway drug. I expect to see beignets stuffed in your pillow case next.) Clean clothes you were instructed to put away stuffed into one drawer. Pajamas from the night before discarded on the floor for your servant to fold or put in the hamper. Mismatched shoes hidden under your dresser. Dirty underwear under your desk. Dirty socks thrown into the clean sock drawer. Seriously? Ponytail holders haphazardly thrown on the floor when you took them out of your hair and couldn’t be bothered to put where they go. Damp towels on the wood floors.
I didn’t go to law school so I could pick up used kleenex hidden under your clock radio! I have important blog ranting to do! And eventually I’m going to have to get a real job and I can’t sell “adept at not touching the icky side of inside-out underwear hidden in the laundry” as an interim skill set. I know I’ve been in a lot of weddings, but “Maid of Honor” doesn’t mean what you think it means! I hereby declare WAR! The servant has left the building! Is it annoying for me to my sentences with exclamation points?!
I know you are laughing at me because this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I am a very tidy person. Some may even say OCD. I’ve been railing on my daughter to keep her room clean, to no avail. Deprivation of allowance, television privileges withheld, friends not allowed over. Nothing has worked. She just doesn’t give a shit. Today I decided I was going to use an old weapon: Reverse Psychology. I am sure this is going to back-fire, but I’m desperate. I have started to throw shit haphazardly in my messiest daughter’s room and then just shutting the door. Will she even notice shit piling up? I’ve been littering her floor with ponytail holders when I find them. Throwing my dirty laundry next to her bed. I’ve enlisted the oldest to just start putting her shit in her sister’s room, too. “But she just throws my slippers back in my room?” “Then cram them under her bed!” I respond with an evil glint in my eye. I have a bad feeling about this…Stay tuned!
Not snarky at all! I appreciate your insights. I’m trying to be selective about how I send my kids to therapy when they are adults. There are much worse things than a messy room. Must pick battles carefully.
Interesting thought about ADD/ADHD too. I may have had ADHD as a child (can’t decide if it may just have been a maternal non-coping issue) and my son is being treated for it presently.
I am fairly untidy and have to think about what I have to do to keep my home clean, so maybe I understand her better. Teach her how to do it, show her. Then, back off, if its not done the way you would do it, as long as there is improvement call it good enough. Give her a set day to have her laundry and sheets outside her door. She will get the picture when all her clothing is dirty, thats a pretty good wakeup call. Maybe she needs a bin to put her clean clothing in? My husband prefers boxes to a dresser (weird I know, but it solved a LOT of fighting in our house). THere is no one RIGHT way to organize and clean, accept her way or do it yourself…
I hope this didnt come off as snarky, but I lived with an OCD father and it was hell till we got on the same page because I didn’t do things “right” for many years. I was in my teens when I told him my methods were just as right as his, give me the shit I need to do it my way… poof no more problem.
I tried all that with my daughter. Then found out that one of the signs of ADD/ADHD in girls (oddly, not boys) is 1)The inability to organize and stay that way and 2)Finishing projects. I looked around at her mess, at mine and at all the unfinished projects we both have and decided to pick my battles.
For me, I realized I had to be organized, but could only accomplish it in one place. And since feeding said kid depended on it, work won. I am overly organized and run a very ship shape office, bordering on OCD. If it doesn’t get done at home, I just don’t care any more. It will. Someday. Maybe.
I read once that Madonna told her daughter that anything she did not put away and was found on the floor would be bagged up and donated to Good Will (charity of your choice). Supposedly she actually did it! Interesting….isn’t her daughter now “designing” clothes??
I could not keep silent on this one. Being in the same situation, I have get the most personal enjoyment (and results) from the following tactics: (1) Removing items from the room that they have “lost the privilege” of using ie garbage can, toy box, lounging pillows etc. (2) Throwing shoes out the back door into the yard when they are left downstairs [in the winter I throw them down the basement stairs] and (3) Not returning washed clothes that were inside out. I have a drawer in the laundry room that gets quite full.
Not snarky at all! I appreciate your insights. I’m trying to be selective about how I send my kids to therapy when they are adults. There are much worse things than a messy room. Must pick battles carefully.
Interesting thought about ADD/ADHD too. I may have had ADHD as a child (can’t decide if it may just have been a maternal non-coping issue) and my son is being treated for it presently.
I still do. I have learned to accept that I will never be a winner of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
I am fairly untidy and have to think about what I have to do to keep my home clean, so maybe I understand her better. Teach her how to do it, show her. Then, back off, if its not done the way you would do it, as long as there is improvement call it good enough. Give her a set day to have her laundry and sheets outside her door. She will get the picture when all her clothing is dirty, thats a pretty good wakeup call. Maybe she needs a bin to put her clean clothing in? My husband prefers boxes to a dresser (weird I know, but it solved a LOT of fighting in our house). THere is no one RIGHT way to organize and clean, accept her way or do it yourself…
I hope this didnt come off as snarky, but I lived with an OCD father and it was hell till we got on the same page because I didn’t do things “right” for many years. I was in my teens when I told him my methods were just as right as his, give me the shit I need to do it my way… poof no more problem.
I tried all that with my daughter. Then found out that one of the signs of ADD/ADHD in girls (oddly, not boys) is 1)The inability to organize and stay that way and 2)Finishing projects. I looked around at her mess, at mine and at all the unfinished projects we both have and decided to pick my battles.
For me, I realized I had to be organized, but could only accomplish it in one place. And since feeding said kid depended on it, work won. I am overly organized and run a very ship shape office, bordering on OCD. If it doesn’t get done at home, I just don’t care any more. It will. Someday. Maybe.
I read once that Madonna told her daughter that anything she did not put away and was found on the floor would be bagged up and donated to Good Will (charity of your choice). Supposedly she actually did it! Interesting….isn’t her daughter now “designing” clothes??
I could not keep silent on this one. Being in the same situation, I have get the most personal enjoyment (and results) from the following tactics: (1) Removing items from the room that they have “lost the privilege” of using ie garbage can, toy box, lounging pillows etc. (2) Throwing shoes out the back door into the yard when they are left downstairs [in the winter I throw them down the basement stairs] and (3) Not returning washed clothes that were inside out. I have a drawer in the laundry room that gets quite full.