Parenting is the ultimate Sisyphean task.
Just when you have it all figured out, everything changes.

Sorry, no wisdom here. I'm burned out. :-)

2009 SAHD Fishing Trip:
www.sahdsfish.4t.com

When we lived in Texas, and all my kids were fairly small an in the toy dropped where ever they were mode, I did use a rake to help clean-up. It actually helped to get them to start putting away their toys.

At the time my wife would travel a good deal for work, she would typically be gone from a Monday thru Thursday, sometimes longer. On those trips I would let the house go until the day before she came home. After a particularly bad week I looked at the family room and told the kids it was time to clean up and of course I got a big moan. I went to the garage and got the rake and just walked into the room and raked all the toys into a big pile. The kids were amazed that I would actually use a rake inside the house. We then all sat down in the middle of the pile and started to sort and put everything away. It made a "job" more fun, and after a couple of times the kids started to pick up after themselves.

Now of course that they are all teens or older, they just drop everything where they were so we are back to square one, but that's another story!

Mike Stilwell
Daddyshome, Inc.
DC Metro Dads

It doesn't get any easier let me tell you. We got fed up with this very thing as well so we tried the trash bag method. The way it works is this:

I told them one night after dinner that anything of theirs that was found outside their rooms at bedtime would be mine for a week. They all mumbled and grumbled and said "yeah right" and left their stuff laying around as usual. I got 3 trash bags, one for each, put a strip of duct tape with each kid's name on it on each bag and began filling them up. It sucked. I was pissed. I felt disrespected. I got madder with every toy I picked up. But eventually I got finished. I thought about waking the kids up early and dumping the trash bags on the floor and making them clean everything up before school, but I didn't feel like getting up that early. So, I took the bags and put them up in the attic.

The next day I reminded the kids of the consequences of leaving things out and the ritual continued. After about a week, I had a couple of trash bags per kid, but the amounts were dwindling day by day. Not sure if they were running out of stuff or just finally wising up, but by Friday night we were where I wanted to be, with the kids picking up their stuff and taking it up to their rooms or putting it away. We cleaned the rest of the house and afterwards I took the bags out of the attic and we went to each kid's room and dumped their bags out on the floor and ALL OF THEM helped them put each kid's stuff away. This was the key to getting the message across, that everyone does their part daily or everyone will be doing it at a later date. Either way, everyone has to help. They hated it, too which was what I wanted. I stood at the door and watched them the whole time. Room by room, bag by bag, we progressed until the last bag was empty and the last room was clean.

I told them the bagging and storing and dumping would continue until we had figured this out. Turns out that was all it took. There are still the occasional items left laying around and I'm not a Nazi about it like I was initially, but I still have the original bags and all I have to do to get the kids to pick up their stuff is ask if I need to get the trash bags out and they clean their stuff right up. It's kind of extreme, but if you're at that point, you might consider it. A friend of mine calls his "toy timeout" where toys left in the floor are put in timeout for a week. Every Monday the toy timeout box is dragged out and dumped and the toys have to be put away immediately or they go back in for another week. Anything left in the box for 3 weeks straight is donated to charity. Not sure if you're at this point yet, but...

Hope this helps.

Making it look difficult. Living the dream.

Mine are 9 & 11 now and the pattern hasn't changed. Just all the school crap gets added to the mix. Old homework, new homework, art projects, notices, forms, more notices, last years school books..... its endless. Our house is a disaster of clutter and stuff lying around. I've given up that it will ever change. As one of my friends kindly said - "You're house may not be tidy, but it is usually pretty clean ". I've got better things to do than pick up after everyone all day. Things that have more positive impact on the family life than a perfect house.

Tim

The legend lives!

2009 SAHD Fishing Trip:
www.sahdsfish.4t.com

^^ same here - the kitchen is the main thing i focus on. problem is i seem to say, to myself or out loud, "i need to clean the kitchen" probably everydamnday.

just a 9mo to watch over but for a little while i have an older lady the next block over watch her for 4hrs a day so that i can tend to some stuff leftover from my life before my daughter and sometimes use it to tend to the house.

its a tough battle .. i want to be a cleaner and more tidy person but its always not been in my DNA and i hate it.

now if i can only get the wife to realize saying "i'm glad she doesn't have every toy in the world" while still buying her every toy in the world just doesn't add up .....

be well

I said it worked on the kids. Even I'm not crazy enough to use it on my wife's stuff!!!

Making it look difficult. Living the dream.

I'm a bit more tolerant of stuff than mbieweng, perhaps, but my approach has been to compartmentalize. Even with the newfound freedom that comes with my 11 month old's crawling and psuedo-walking, I've created 'play zones' with toys in a few centralized locations throughout the house. Toys do not go more than a few feet from those zones, and when we're done with toys, I put them back. As there are several zones, each has no more than 15 toys in it, so cleanup only takes seconds. And for toys with many parts, they go into bins or containers of some sort, en masse, so that sorting and reassembly isn't a necessary precursor to putting them away. Will I be able to keep to this routine as she gets older? I dunno...but it's worth a shot.

For older, more mobile children, you may want to consider the use of a harness and restraining device to prevent them from carrying toys throughout the house (especially if they're a hyper hypo or are friends with Nicole Kidman).

Hahaha....just wait. Yes, I was fine for about 5 years too. :-) I think the combination of a very mobile 1 year old, a very small-part-project-oriented 5 year old (all stuff that's incompatible with the eat-everything 1 year old), the sheer quantity of junk, and the endless repetition is what finally did in my sanity.

In any case, thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. Every idea helps.