Tidying bedrooms

[ImFab]

My kids are 5, 7 and 9 and the younger two have smallish rooms. All have storage and book shelves. When I do a proper tidy, sort and clean it takes 2 hours to do each room. It lasts 2 hours if I am lucky. I have just been in DD's room and there are hair bobbles and jigsaw pieces on the floor along with her mp3 player wire and various other bits.

it just makes me sad that they don't seem to care if things get lost or broken and dd said the other day she likes her room messy.

I am wondering whether I should stop fighting a losing battle. Their room = their choice? I am forever telling them that things are put back in their proper place they won't be always asking me where things are.

I feel your pain!

I think you have to be really on top of it if you want them to be responsible for the keeping tidy, ie quick checks/inspections! daily so it doesnt get a chance to get bad.

or you can accept defeat and just do it yourself.

I give warnings that anything left on the floor will be treated as rubbish and will go in the bin, i have binned stuff a few timesso if i say this now it generally spurs them to pick it all up.

I let the older kids have their rooms how they want (15 & 17) and ask for them to clean them every couple of weeks.
The youngest (nearly 4) has the smallest room and its reasonably tidy, but I have a couple of baskets in there and generally just scoop stuff up and put it in there, I don't really 'sort' it.

They wouldn't care if we said they would go in the bin, DH said that when they wouldn't clear the landing and they didn't do it. He has thrown some things out and I was a bit annoyed as it is a waste of money and achieves nothing but I need to do something.

My DDs are 4 and 9 and share a room... I have basically divided the room, a bed on each side, with their respective stuff divided. I am responsible for DD2's side, while showing her how to keep it nice and learn to put things away properly; DD1 is responsible for her side though I will help her tidy if she has made a real effort with it.
DD1's side is always a dump :\ I have run out of bargaining tools and rewards. I don't want a showhome, I want to be able to walk to open the curtains without breaking either an ankle or a toy. I find old plum stones and sweets stuck to the carpet underneath everything. She never has any clean socks because they are thrown all over the floor instead of in the laundry.
sigh I would love not to care. My room used to be a sheer dump and I shared with my little sister. But in retrospect it must have been really crap for her having a shithole for a bedroom and not wanting to take friends in there :( it looked like a junk shop run by a kleptomaniac- there was even a traffic cone...

That is my point too. I am always hurting my foot when I stand on things. The little one manages to put his clothes in the laundry basket so I don't see why the older ones can't. I told ds I wouldn't pick his clothes off his floor and he had to go to school in a jumper he had already worn as he ran out. DD runs out of socks too and I am going to tell her today I won't pick up anymore washing off her floor.

I have two DDs, 5 and 3.

Younger DD obviously doesn't tidy her room yet, but I encourage her to help. Her room is often a mess, because she has (to my mind) a lot of toys.

Getting older DD to tidy her room is like drawing teeth. She does it, but I have to make sure that a) she does it every evening b) she gets a sticker if she does it c) the bin bag comes out if she doesn't and d) she has limited time to do it. Also, how she tidies up is very important. Quite often she would just get everything off the floor. I spent two days holiday from work actually getting her room straightened out; reassembling puzzles and putting various other toys back together.

If I could put the clock back I'd have made sure she had less toys when she was 2-3. Our children (and for that matter, all our friends' children) get deluged with cheap plastic toys and without constant careful pruning, things can get out of control. My elder DD (in my opinion) simply got used to having a messy room and doesn't really care that Toy A can't be played with because it's missing bits - she can play with Toy B. Not a good look and I rather suspect that I'll still be on at her re her room when she's in her teens.

I suspect messy rooms were probably less of a problem to our parents' generation because they simply had less stuff.

With washing on the floor you have to stick to your guns, if its on the floor it doesn't get washed - and let them run out of stuff. I cheat slightly on this and have a bag/bin in the older kids rooms and ask them to put their clothes in their, they are pretty good with this now.
I am also a complete dragon about things like missing bits of jigsaws and moan constantly until the missing parts are found. On holiday one year I refused to let anyone go out for the day until the missing Jenga brick was found.
But saying that, I'm not too fussy about tidyness.
At DD's school the teacher has a brilliant and simple tactic to get the kids to tidy up - she used a big eggtimer which has a 3 minute timer and tells them to tidy up really fast - then turns the timer over - the kids run round like made, put everything away and 3 minutes is just long enough.

Some how I found myself cleaning and tidying DD's room today. I needed to keep busy after an upsetting night with ds.

I was upset to find a jigsaw piece in the garden. Not a big deal but still annoying.

I will stick to my guns about laundry but then if it is uniform what then? The head is very strict about uniform.

I also feel my children have too many toys but that isn't their fault.

ImFab,

Having too many toys is a cause rather than a fault. A lot of children I know have more toys than they know what to do with, and certainly more toys than they can be reasonably expected to keep tidy without supervision. I think it's hard to teach a child tidiness when they heaps and heaps of stuff.

The best solution (IMHO) is not to get heavy with one's child but thin out the toys.

I think that children just are (mostly) fairly messy, and the best thing is not to get too stressed about it. Mine are 10 and 11 and they are both fairly messy, but it's a much bigger issue with dd because she has more stuff, does more things and has her friends over to play most days. Her idea of tidying is fairly perfunctory too (lots of stuffing things into the wardrobe, under the bed etc). Every week or two we tell her she can't have any friends over until her room is tidy and then she puts in a fair bit of effort. Every couple of months it gets a bit overwhelming and I have to help/supervise.

I do yell at her and some times I tell her I can't even go into her room it is so horrible (she like a good night kiss), and say how sad I am that I painted her room and bought her nice stuff that she doesn't look after (basic guilt trip really ) and she is very apologetic. But then I was messy at her age too, so I know it will pass (not that dh agrees with me on that!).

I don't get heavy with the children.

I just get upset that they don't put things away and don't seem bothered if things get lost or broken.