To keep clothes in a box

[Daboomboom]

Apparently clothes are too hard to hang up for my 14yr old. Fine. Swop the wardrobe for drawers. 3 months later, its too hard to fold/roll the clothes into the drawers. She actually seems to believe this and isnt using excuses.

We have a chest which currently holds board games. I've suggested just giving her the chest so that she can throw the clothes in there instead of on the floor. She is happy with that. I'm not convinced she wont just decide it's too hard to open the lid but it's worth a shot.

Husband however thinks it's ridiculous and is trying to insist she just uses the drawers.

On the one hand, I dont care if she wants her clothes all over her floor. On the other, she gets them mixed up with dirty clothes (yes she has her own laundry basket in her room), cant find things and last week something got broken because it was under the clothes. No, it's not my issue but she's 14 so it becomes everyone's ussue. She was also bitten by a spider that was hiding in her clothes last year.

YABU - shes 14 and its not hard to put in drawers

YANBU - who cares how the clothes are stored as long as they are away somehow.

YABU - I think because you're right in that the box will become too difficult to use.
At 14, you are doing her zero favours. She should have to deal with the consequences - unclear on whether clothes are clean or not, standing on and breaking things (perhaps not advocating for spider bites though, I'm drawing a line there!).
It's quite infantilising. You can't fix every slightly arduous, repetitive, even irritating task. We have to learn how to do chores, and how to manage ourselves to get them done whether we fancy doing it or not.

Help her come up with a strategy for getting clean clothes hung up and away. A timer, or a certain amount of songs from a playlist, or putting them away in colour order - honestly, life is full of these little mindnumbing tasks and the kindest thing you can do is teach her how to plod through them and get them done.

We use kallax boxes, so stuff can be chucked in, but also sorted a bit (eg different boxes for trousers and tops).

It is not your issue, by making concessions for her laziness, you are making it your problem. I hope she replaced and paid for the thing she broke. You are doing this girl no favours by pandering to her foolishness.

All 3 of mine (and DH) are a bit shit at putting clothes away. (Laundry is a shared task, but is done collectively and then clean clothes returned to rooms.) One DD is the worst -- her floor is regularly a sea of clothes, both clean and dirty. I do periodically help her with tidying it up, and sometimes pick it all up to put on the bed so the floor can see a hoover. I can and do support, but fundamentally she needs to decide she can see the benefit of having a tidy room and no amount of teaching her how to do it will help. I might not think this if I didn't have two others who are absolutely fine about keeping their rooms in (better) order.

It was something of hers. We've told her we wont be replacing it.

And to your question: a box won't help. (Sorry that part was so obvious I skipped over it in my head.)

What kind of a roommate will she become if you enable her mess? What kind of life partner will she be?

The kind that leaves their dirty clothes wherever they feel like and expect someone else to do the work. The kind that has pests in their dirty clothes pile and breaks stuff because it's under the dirty clothes. The kind whose room smells because dirty stuff all over. She won't hang up her stuff. She won't use drawers.

Your job is to prepare her for adulthood and to be able to take care of herself and her environment. Not enable her to be that person who won't pick up their shit and put it away. Do not enable the floordrobe.

Pick up and put away and she gets the Wi-Fi password for the day. This chore is part of earning an allowance if you give her one.

Her room hasn't been vacuumed in... I dont know how long (hence the spider).

It's come about because someone had to look in the attic this morning. The hatch is in her room so not only did we have to have room to pull down the ladder, her room had to be somewhat presentable. It took her an hour to make her room presentable and vacuumed. The only way this was achieved was because she just put her clothes in baskets, not drawers.

to be fair I wouldn’t have got rid of the wardrobe but just put all clothes in a pile on the bottom. Drawers are never easier so that was a daft move on yours and daughters part. Even taking the doors off the wardrobe would have been better. My daughter has a hanging rail for example to facilitate.

i advocate for a towel rail and/or hooks in the back of the door. Easy to throw clean clothes over. And a washing basket that doesn’t have a lid.

i think k you need to keep some form of actual furniture to encourage a long term plan of putting stuff away properly, but at the same time make it as easy as possible day to day.

The wardrobe needed replacing anyway. It was a case of a new wardrobe or drawers. She'd been happily using a small chest of drawers for some things and wasnt using the wardrobe at all.
Clothes piled up in the bottom of a wardrobe just end up falling out all over the floor anyway. 🤷‍♀️
I dislike drawers but I know some people hate hanging stuff up.
So it wasnt as silly as it seems.

There are some hooks on the back of the door but her door opens flush against the wall so they dont hold much.

I think 14 is plenty old enough to be able to do her own laundry. If she has to do it (I presume she wants to look presentable for school and friends) then she should naturally follow through with separating clean from dirty etc. Ask her if she wants drawers, hanging space or a box, show her how to sort laundry (colours, delicates, whatever she has) and leave her to it. Maybe reminders for a week or two when school starts again, but if she finds it ‘too difficult’ it might be easier if she does it more as she needs the practice.

See, this is regularly said on here but in reality I know nobody who has their kids do their own laundry. Help with the family laundry, sure but not just do their own.

I'm not going to have her do her own laundry anyway. It will end up with huge amounts of extra work for me which I dont have the capacity to deal with right now.

She’s a teenager. Pick your battles.

A floordrobe is extremely low on most parents list of teen worries.

I was doing my own laundry at 13 years old. I'm not saying you make her do her own laundry but it's sheer laziness saying that putting her clothes in a drawer is too hard. It's no wonder the young ones nowadays are so inept at life, their parents pander to this kind of thing so they don't develop any life skills

Mine both did their own laundry from younger than 14. They get to certain ages and have to do it their own way and you have to leave them to it. If they wanted to wear crumpled clothes or whatever that was up to them. And they naturally take care of their clean laundry as wearing dirty stuff was an absolute no, so if it gets mixed up again they would have had to wash it again.

I don’t understand how it would make extra work for you? You have extra work now, nagging her!

YABU and doing her no favours at all.

She's 14 years old, it's completely unacceptable that she can't hang up/store/look after her clothes properly.
It's a symptom of a wider issue. No boundaries, no respect. She doesn't need to be a neat freak, but needs to be learning something about self care.

Totally with your DH . It is ridiculous. When she goes out into the wide world nobody is going to pander to her.

I did my own laundry from the age of 11 - no other choice - and my 2 year old can currently load things in the washing machine and switch it on so AIBU for that. However, on the chest - I’d be relaxed about the floor or the chest, whichever she prefers. I was a disaster as a teenager and indeed as a single adult with that stuff - only when I had kids did I shape up. Didn’t hurt me (I’ve always kept shared areas clean).

I did my own washing from age 12 by hand, and taught my daughter to do the same, based on the idea that you may not always have access to a washing machine, so being aware, if you do have to hand wash, of what things tend to get dirty, where, ie, armpits, gussets, collars, etc. Not teaching your kids to do their own washing is lazy parenting in my view. If she refuses to wash by hand, then teach her how to do the family washing, sorting colours, checking temperatures, etc. She also needs to learn what the washing labels mean, ie., hand wash, temperature, dry clean, tumble dry, etc.

I also think the idea of checking her room each day, morning or evening up to you, and if it's not tidy, then no internet access the next day. She'll soon get the idea.

I think a chair to throw clean clothes on is the easiest option. Nothing to open or rummage through. My mum.is 75 and still does that (my mum can operate a laundry basket though). She does have a wardrobe too, but I think clothes only make it in there for special occasions

I think that sounds like a good idea, OP and I might try it myself.

I myself have 'the chair' for draping clothes that I will wear the following day over.

My youngest son uses a sofa in his bedroom for his piles of clothes.

My eldest child was very messy and unorganized when he lived at home. I mean, really, really messy. He moved out a couple of years ago and is now very tidy and organised and I would like to add, respectful. Please ignore some of the dramatic replies here that you are encouraging a disrespectful child to whom nobody will 'pander.' She is 14. Peak messy teenager age. Normal.

If she's got piles of clothes on the floor, she's probably got a full load. At 14, she should be capable of running her clothes through when she gets a full load in her hamper. Put a hamper in her room and her dirty clothes go there. She does a load and when dry, puts them away.

Guess what. Teaching kids to adult well is work. But it's necessary work.

My husband and I were both raised doing household chores. We raised our kids that way. It makes the transition to adulthood much easier when you are used to doing your own basic life stuff.

Definitely.
It's just whether it's worth messing about with the chest which will be a faff.

Last time I asked for help with laundry on here I was torn to shreds (some people got very overly invested in my dirty clothing!) so Im not going to go into how it will make more work for me, but it will.

No, the chest won’t get used because she won’t open the lid. She’ll just chuck stuff on top.

Has she got too many clothes for storage? When mine get bad it’s often because there’s not enough room to find things.

Basically I think I’d be going in there every few days and standing over her while she sorts it. At the very least a “clean here, dirty here” zone.