She who giveth, shall take it away...

It all started a few months ago. I was fed. up. I was tired of cleaning the girls room, and returning only hours later to discover Hurricane's Isabella and/or Sydney had hit again. I threatened. I bribed. And finally I quit. I thought it would get bad enough, that they would decide to clean it up themselves. So then I quit doing their laundry, citing the inability to enter their room and decipher the clean from the dirty anyhow. They started wearing dirty clothes. Sydney started sneaking Isabella's underwear. They would laugh and scoff at the idea of cleaning it up.

Then it hit me. My brilliant idea. I took an afternoon, cleaned it well one last time. I told them the same rules still applied, that was it, no more help from Mommy and they were once again responsible. This time, there was a catch. If it got bad enough, and I got fed up enough, I would go in, and empty the room out. Clean. Everything. Gone. They still.. didn't listen.

Yesterday afternoon, the time came. Isabella left for a playdate, Jackson was napping, I asked Chris to please take Sydney out for lunch, and not to come back for at least an hour. What followed was an hour of lugging huge bags of stuff crap down the stairs. Frantically digging things from under the bed, dumping drawers of papers, pens, lip balms, etc. Unplugging the cable, all the movies.. gone. I locked everything up, vacuumed and dusted, and waited. With a huge smile on my face.

Sydney took it in stride, at first. In fact, I think she even thanked me! There is so much room in here! I can play dancing (without music, hehe)! And build forts! She got alittle sad that all her dollies were missing (although several hundred other dollies still reside in the playroom) these were her favorites. Then she told me Isabella was going to beat me up for taking all her stuff. Hmph.

I picked up Isabella from her playdate. We walked into the house, and she went directly to her room. She went in, shut the door, and didn't come out for a few minutes. I pictured her frantically digging around her pillows looking for all her "secret" stuff. All gone. She came out and casually asked for her wallet. I told her it was gone, for now, and if she needed to buy anything (?) that she could ask me first and we would talk about it. She slowly went back to her room, not saying anything. I followed her in, and all 3 of us had alittle chat. She was MAD that I went through her "personal" things. Sydney was mad because Isabella was mad and wouldn't play with her in her new found space!

I told them the "new rules". They need to make their bed in the mornings, and put their dirty clothes away in the basket. That's it. That's all they have! If they can do this for a week, with little to no reminding, they will get 1 (one) item back next Sunday morning. With this one new item, we repeat the following week with the same rules, and so on and so forth. If they don't play by the rules, we will go backwards and take an item away the following Sunday. At this rate, I bet I will be having a massive garage sale by Christmas. We'll see.

Comments

[gramma]

Too funny. Good for you. Bedrooms look wonderful now. Hope they stay that way for awhile. I remember when Danielle's room looked very similar to theirs (the before) that is. Love ya lots

[Nana]

OMG - tell then Nana loves their room now! LOL Sure does look good. The book shelves look a little sad though. Love to all - Nana

[Granpa]

Good for you..this is a defining moment in your responsibility as a parent! There will be others, trust me!! LOL.. Nothing wrong with a bit of tough love..they will tell you when they are a bit older that they deserved this so don't worry that you were to harsh.

[Tanya]

Man, I gotta implement some tough love. Good stuff Danny.

[Jenn]

This is too funny Danielle. My mom did this to my sister and I once upon a time. We never actually got the toys back. She said she threw them out. A few years later we found them in garbage bags in the garage. They had gone moldy by then. Keep us posted on how it turns out

[Donna]

You.Are.A.Hardcore.Mama.

Love this story. Just read it aloud to Michel. It made me laugh so hard!! I'll be curious to hear updates!!