To have told my children that whilst cleaning the pit they call a bedroom I found

[D0oinMeCleanin]

138 spiders. A colony of wild rats and 2 empty capri sun cartons crawling with maggots?

I only tidied their room last week. It's a total pit again.

They get £5 a week (or rather they don't get) pocket money for keeping their room clean. Clearly this is not enough of an incentive.

I know I shouldn't clean it for them but the mess bothers me greatly.

Of course when they go to bed I will tell them I removed all the insects and pests and as long as they stay clean they shouldn't come back.

DS1 is immune to having things confiscated. He got to the stage where everything was confiscated and he just read his school book which I couldn't take and his room was still a pigsty.
He just wasn't bothered.

DD 14 was the same though and is now is very good, and can't sleep if she thinks it's messy. I am hoping DS1 grows out of it.

Maybe a chore box like this one would work? If you pick up their stuff, they have to do a chore to get it back!

Girly rats on their bed. There are more girly rats actually in the bed. Mumma ratty and her babies and Kevin, Dadda ratty on his cage. The other boys were sleeping under their bed.

We were meant to have 2 males but one of them gave birth just after we got him! Of course by the time the new cage was delivered 'he' was pregnant again.

Dd2 can tell them all apart. I can't. One of the new babies is all brown. He's called Bon Bon and he's mine

Redhead - I was very messy. My parents rarely made me tidy my room. I left home for uni at 18 and only went back to live for a few months twice (now early 40s). It's perfectly possible to live in the real world away from home without having been a tidy teenager.

Bad form on the place you got them from! How long have you had the original two?

But they are gorgeous :) I love siamese rats and also babies :) Make sure you separate the boys and girls by 5 weeks to prevent further pregnancies though!

How many are there overall at the moment?

A chore box might work. They're actually very good at helping in the rest of the house. Dd1 cooks lunch on a Saturday and washes and dries school uniform/helps dd2 pack her bag for the next day when I'm at work.

Dd2 keeps the bathroom clean and feeds the dogs breakfast. Plus bits of washing up etc as and when they're asked.

It's just their room they have an issue with.

I think keeping the room tidy is too vague.

Spend a day decluttering. Give them a daily chores list gor their room and a daily pocket money rate - 70p a day.

Before they go to bed you want X Y Z (bed cleared, toys away, rat cages cleaned etc)

If they don't they lose 70p and make their lives harder for tomorrow.

If they don't do it the day after they losr another 70p and get X punishment etc.

We've had them since the beginning of June.

It was very bad form of the place we got them from.

Atm there are 10 girlies including Mumma and 3 boys including Dada.

A local pet shop is going to help us find new homes for the new girl babies. We're keeping bon bon and one other boy baby.

We play a game where we set an alarm for 15 mins and tidy (try and tell them what to do or if they are like my kids - they won't see the mess). Then we have a 15 min break - we watch a film in bits sometimes. If we get the whole house finished as a family we go out for a treat - cheaper than a cleaner, and quite fun - my 4yo gets excited when the alarms go off!

I get enough grief with my 5! All being lazy at sleeping atm

It's stories like this that made me very glad to get four of my six from NFRS studs. The other two were rescues.

(Zhaan says hi )

The boys sleep constantly. They brought kevin downstairs a few days ago to exercise him properly because they were worried he's getting depressed he promptly curled up in the dogs bed and went to sleep

I can't really complain about them. The kids do everything for them. They take very good care of them. Dd2, who is the only one in the house who can tell them all apart, has even devised a "scritching" timetable to make sure they all get equal scritching time, except Kevin who gets extra on account of his depression

Tell them you found money and you are keeping it.

This!

Haha, do you know how old Kevin is? Might be age kicking in. Our boys are now 10 months and got noticeably lazier at the beginning of summer. We thought that it was the heat, but it seems that it's just their new default mode

Oh gosh, ours need a scritching timetable! Stealing that idea Have they tried playing chase with the babies? It's great fun! Our older lot don't like it but we got the babies at five weeks in July and they properly play chase with us and let us flip them onto their backs to tickle their belly.

At least their immune systems will be nice and healthy!!
I want to throttle love my DC's dearly, but they are unbelievably untidy. DSD and DSS are only with us for 50% of holidays and 25% of term time and they are used to a mother who must be like a tidy-up shadow to them. I have a different routine with DS and DSCs as I was not put here as their personal slave and I have a seriously bad back so have to crawl about rather than bend down and pick up!
As DS is 12 he is paid responsible for his own room, this is usually fine if he has friends round as embarrassment seems to be a massive motivator for him (that and the £4 a week pocket/chore money). I do tend to go in every couple of months and help him blitz it, but other than changing the sheets I leave it all to him. DSS 6 and DSD 8 like to tip literally every single thing in their rooms onto the floor and then throw as many clothes as they can into the mix. Their idea of tidying ends up with lego in their sock drawers! They also leave a trail around the house/on the stairs/in the garden. I despair!

Just a thought, are you getting Mum Rat spayed? Because if not, she'll need a companion too. This is how we ended up with 5 rats, Nibble's sister was dying and whilst we planned to spay them, due to their age there was no point (if spayed between 10-12 weeks it cuts the risk of mammary tumours in girls dramatically) so we got two baby girls to go in with Nibbles (they were spayed last week so we don't have this problem again!)

My mum once "hid" £20 in my room and told me if I cleaned up I'd find it easily.

What a sucker I was to fall for that!

We're keeping some of the older girl babies. They're new cage is enormous. My dad has been tasked with extending the boys smaller cage to add 2 new floors.

The kids have also asked him to build a rat assault course for free range time and some special toys to cheer kevin up.

We were told he was 6 months old when we got him, although they also told us Mumma rat was a buck, so who knows how old he is.

Pinky, your mum is awesome. I'm definitely trying that.

katiekay, well not really, you don't pay a servant. I do the standing over too on the inbetween days when I have just noticed squalor and make them clean it while they get the lecture on funnily exactly as you put it, me not being a servant.

My dad had been threatening to dump the contents of my room if I didn't tidy up. I came home one afternoon to find most of my possessions in our front garden and the boot of the car open. I was 12. Looking back I am impressesed with how far he took it.

How old are your DC?

They are 10 and 7.

Dunkling - servants do get paid. (It's slaves that aren't paid)
So, you know your current method isn't working and they are taking a loan of you. Time to put some changes in place. It's mad that two teenagers won't do basic things like cleaning up their own urine. Plus it is a health hazard. You know and they know it. Your teens aren't going to change until you make them. I'd say this is non-negotiable. Know how and when to clean is a basic life skill.

Do you have wifi? Do they have electronics that need wifi? Learn to change the password. They cant have the password unless their rooms are in order. You could do this just on Sunday, or daily to help them learn to tidy daily so it doesn't become such an awful tip that it's too big a job even for the weekend.

Mom i heard of this from used it to keep her teens on top of things for the summer. Changed it every night, they had a standardized list of things regarding self care, room care, pet care, and household chores and summer reading lists. They could choose which days to do most of it (obviously chores like putting the rubbish out has a fixed day). As soon as they completed their list for the day, they could call her to get the days password. I think there was a deadline. She didn't require them to get up at a certain time, but if they hadn't called by 2 pm (because they weren't done yet) then it was too late. Sleep as late as you want, but finish your list by 2 pm, or have nothing better to do than carry on with reading your book.

A few months ago that would have worked wonders. The pair of them were glued to Minecraft and Stampy may as well have moved in, but since we moved they've barely touched an electronic device. They're too busy with friends/rats etc to bother.