Last weekend, after a moment of pure, brain-exploding frustration that my boys had no idea where any of their clothes were (even though they carried armloads of clean and folded laundry into their room only two days earlier) . . . I declared that Saturday afternoon would be spent decluttering their room.
There were no cheers of delight.
I didn’t care.
I sat on the bottom bunk holding a black trash bag and leaning on a laundry basket designated for donations.
And . . . I spouted off many words of motherly wisdom:
1. Don’t start over there. Let’s worry about the stuff you trip over first.
2. Do we actually need that sheep/cuckoo clock? (The one that baaas on the hour.)
3. It can’t be your favorite drawing if it was at the bottom of a pile of trash.
4. Do you even see that corner? That one. The one piled high with stuff?
5. Next time you receive a gift you know you’ll never, ever play with . . . let’s return it for something you’ll actually use.
6. Please stop wasting your energy doing flips off side of the bed.
7. The corner! The SAME corner. Please don’t leave that corner until it is completely clear.
8. Where do books go? Put them there.
9. IF I let you keep that snakeskin, it must NEVER be left anywhere where I could possibly accidentally touch it. Ever.
10. Any money that is not in your personal designated “money spot” will be divided equally between you. Period. Shhh. We’re not discussing it any more.
What are some things you’ve heard come out of your own mouth while helping your kids purge the, ahem . . . clutter out of their rooms?
--Nony
Funny! I feel like I am constantly nagging my kids, especially my daughter, about their rooms. They are old enough that they should be able to clean on their own (13 and 16), so I can remember any recent quotes. But I did get so frustrated recently that I had my husband remove my daughter’s door from the frame. I told her she could have her privacy back when it was clean. And it didn’t take long – but also didn’t take long to get messy again~
“Can’t” remember….
My daughter first had an issue with buckets of water in the room hiding under the bed, then shoving everything that wasn’t nailed down under her bed…so out came the bed frame. Then an issue of slamming the door too many times…so the door came off. From under her room in the garage, you could hear what sounded like sweeping gravel on the floor. No one could walk in there without killing yourself or breaking whatever it was on the wooden floor. She was middle school through high school age. My son’s (2 yrs older) room was a carpet of clothes, trash, Legos, Knex, junk and more junk. When they were away for a night or two, I would make the mistake of delivering clothes and would wind up cleaning for about 6-8 hours to my satisfaction. Then they would complain that they couldn’t find anything.
Oh i had to laugh at this. I shoved everything under my bed as a kid. I remember Saturdays my mom would make me clear the whole thing out and it would take hours. I i have no idea what i had under there. I don’t remember having that many toys!
“How exactly did you carpet the entire room in Legos? And WHY do you want to spend your money on yet another Lego kit??”
LEGO!!!!! Oh my goodness the mess!!!! The EXTREME volume of little tiny bits!!!! And yes, the carpet the bedroom floor, move on to the living room then set up yet another “mess” in the play room. With the prized lego construction in the most walked through space in the house. Just waiting for me to trip on it and break it back into the 8 million tiny pieces it’s made from so Lego obsessed child can then cry about it being broken!!!!!!! I just don’t know how to co exist with this monstrous collection.
I know where you are coming from, but I have to say I LOVE the sheep “cuckoo” clock. No, no, please don’t mail it to me…my son has no space in his room for ANYTHING else 🙂
It has a unique charm . . . I guess. And really, it’s exactly the sort of thing I would have chosen from a prize room as a child!
That clock is awesome!
Yes it is!
I love that clock…I could use it up here in my craft/office/hoard room… I have space on a wall, somewhere.
I am frequently telling my kids that they clean faster when they aren’t sitting down…. I make them squat or kneel so they can pop up and put things in the right place. Another one is “ok, stop looking at that now…. It takes 5 seconds to figure out a)what it is, b)to whom it belongs, and c)where it ought to be located…” Some day I am going to prerecord myself telling them these things and sit in a corner reading and pressing ‘replay’.
Just put it on a loop tape and wire it to play subliminally under their pillows every night until it happens by osmosis into their brains.
Hee hee.
Great idea… could use that for myself!
Nothing I say but something my “everything has a place and everything should be in it’s place” mother would say/do to me (her unfortunate slob of a daughter).
I would come into my room to find EVERYTHING that was on my bedroom floor/under the bed/bottom of the closet/stacked on surfaces was now tossed on the top of my bed-which now had no sheets on it (so I guess it was technically my matress). I had to get everything put away to her specifications before I would get the sheets to make the bed. Boy did that make for a LONG day.
Ouch. But I may have to try that at some point!
Some days I wish she would come to my house and do that now (but don’t tell her that). It would definitely make me stop procrastinating.
Not a bad idea. Desperate situations need some kind of solution.
Oh I love that clock! It’s so cute!! (yes I would totally take that off your hands 😉 LOL The last time I had my daughters clean their room, when I went up to check it when they said they were done, I saw piles of “stuff” shoved in a corner. When asked why they thought they could do that they said “because we didn’t think you’d come look”….I told them, ALWAYS clean like I’m going to be a psycho mom checking every inch of this room! LOL
So, last week I exhumed every toy in the house and put them on the living room floor.
Then I left the house.
Then I came back and sorted all the toys. My kids are 4 & 6 so I just let them play with the discoveries.
Then I swept out their rooms and introduced them to “what space and order could feel like in your space.” they agreed it was sort of awesome.
THEN I had them “shop” the living room for the best, most important toys that would fit in their rooms.
Voila.
The leftovers have left the house.
It was a little more positive choosing what to keep that would fit than choosing what to let go of. We’ll do it again in Advent to make space for the new toy onslaught!
Erica, I LOVE this idea! It’s truly brilliant! Think you might want to write it up as a guest post? If not, I may make it its own post!
This is a smart way to look at it. When we do a stuffed animal purge I lay them all on the couch and have my daughter pick her favorite 3 big, 4 medium, 5 small. The rest are stuffed back into bean bag chair bags (no beans) or into the attic.
I think we will do this with other items too!
I LOVE the idea of storing stuffed animals in bean bag chair bags.
What a fun way to rotate without having to devote other space to the ones “stored”. Brilliant!
I’d not bother storing them in the attic – we’ve just decluttered the toys that have been stored in the attic for 22 years. We put them all out on the table for the kids to take their favourite memories. The number taken – zero!
I’ve learned to say, “Is it MOM clean?” when they come tell me they are done. That usually sends them back in there for a second round of cleaning, LOL. Because they know I come check with a garbage bag!
I still haven’t had the occasion to find myself saying any of those things, but oh, number 1… I need to record it and put in on repeat when *I* clean and declutter.
Because we have just turned 1 year old named Rachel, our constant question when claiming that their room is clean is “Is it Rachel safe?”
“if you don’t cooperate, daddy is bringing the shop vac upstairs to clean up all your legos.”
We would need a street sweeper!
If I want their room cleaned up, I just grab a garbage bag and open it in their doorway. They start running to clean it up. I have been known to tie the bag on the door handle, that way they can see it and it serves as a reminder that anything left where it shouldn’t be goes in there and never comes back out.
This is awesome. Hehe!!
Oh my, oh my, oh my – I’ve said every one of those things (ok, don’t have the sheep clock, but I’d have a good substitute for it).
Looks like you struck quite a chord, Nony – look at all the comments! I can relate to nearly every one, and appreciate the tips, too.
The only thing I’d add is: when we near the ‘finish line’ I’d say something like “now, isn’t this nice? I know you really like it this way. So THIS time, we’re going to keep it this way, right?”
to which the response is always goofy grins and enthusiastic nods of the heads and “yes, Mom”s (big sigh)
What the heck is that?
That’s disgusting.
How long has that been there?
Yeah, like finding things from a backpack that time forgot… instead of being sneaky and tossing food at school, they would hide it in their rooms like mushy black bananas, sandwich bags filled with liquid sandwiches… oh and my daughter used to hide food dishes from the kitchen and those cute delectable containers of fruit in her bean bag chair. We didn’t find that till we were left to clean her room when we asked her to leave!
So funny that I found myself thinking it could be an inner dialogue with myself, actually, as I try to purge my own stuff. Well, except for the parts about snakeskins and flipping off of bedsides…
LOL! Or how about…
“There is no stuffing left in that pillow. Throw it away already.”
“Pick a new favorite shirt that doesn’t have a rip across the front”
” Do you really NEED all the tags from your new clothes?”
“What is that thing? An apple? It’s blue and fuzzy!”
Ah, boys. Gotta love them!
my mantra for my girls (3 and 5) is, “bend down, pick something up, put it where it goes!” if i say it once, i say it a thousand times. they are notorious for seeing one pony on the top of the pile, which triggers their minds to search desperately to rescue ALL of their ponies from the pit of toys… meanwhile, they are spending valuable time sifting through toys that could already be put away!!
your blog has been an encouragement to declutter our house, and i’m thankful that after a major cleanout a couple of months ago, they’ve been doing great (mostly) at keeping things picked up! thank you!!
“NO! You CAN’T keep it….because I can’t tell what it is or was. And it kinda looks like poop. DON’T EAT IT!!!!!!!!”
Said this to my two year old daughter when trying to clean out her toy box. Figured out it was once a banana, when it fell apart.
Ha!
I tell my 3 1/2 year old “If you don’t put it away, I will,” and she knows that if Mommy puts it away, it goes into the recesses of the basement or the very top shelf of the closet. This doesn’t seem to motivate her yet, but I have a lot fewer toys to clean up than I used to 😉
My mother and I had EPIC battles my entire childhood about cleaning my room… She was/is OCD and has passed it down the line to me. I’m not saying that my room was ever clean, but I really, honestly always knew where everything was. Once I got my own house and was able to clean and organize things my way, I have the cleanest house of all my friends…
My son was bad about leaving money all around his room. I told him that all money I found laying around goes straight into his college fund. That makes it unavailable as spending money. He is much more careful with his money these days.
Number 10 brings back memories. I once told my sons that if I cleaned their room for them I got to keep all the money I found. They smugly said Okay! By the time I was done, I had $18.34 in my pocket. They couldn’t believe there was that much loose change just scattered everywhere and they never let me clean their room again!
Oh, I love it!
After my son just moved out, we were left with cleaning and packing his junk he left behind to live in another state. He boarded a plane with 2 carry-ons and we then shipped him his beloved computer and 2 monitors packed with clothes to cushion it. After a week of packing, I found at least 20 pairs of dead socks and almost $20 in cash from several boxes and in the washer.
I always looked at my son and said You clean it OR I clean it. Your choice. His room always looked nice and it was all his doing. Now his dorm room at college looks pretty good as well.
“It is not acceptable to shove everything under your bed or your dresser when you clean up” “No it doesn’t just disappear simply because I can’t see it!”
Every Morning!!!
When my now 26 year old son was about 12, I was sooooo fed up with washing, ironing, folding and putting clothes away, only to find everything in a heap on the floor getting walked over etc because he couldn’t find what he wanted, or wore something for an hour then left it where he stepped out of it, I made him wash and iron his own clothes. Didn’t matter if I was doing a wash, I refused to include his things. He soon learnt clean clothes didn’t miraculously appear. He is still a slob, but if he has to he knows how to iron and is usually the one in his relationship to do the laundry.
Don’t look in that black trash bag.;)
Both my kids have horrible messy rooms(a girl and boy). Once, when my son was cleaning out from under his bed, he found a dead frog. So now, I say, “I your room clean enough that I won’t find any dead frogs?”
Oh my word, so funny!!
“Quit making me sound like Grandma!” as my mom was sitting nearby laughing at me.
Love it!
My personal favorite was when I found a Black Widow Spider that had mad a cozy little web around my son’s plug-in night light. Really? You didn’t notice THAT???
Oh my word! So scary!
Why do you think a good place for lolly wrappers is under your bed?
I always give all the money found to the youngest’s piggy bank. 🙂
“You only have to clean up one thing… at a time.”
“If you put a much energy into cleaning your room as you put into trying to AVOID cleaning your room, you’d have been done in 10 minutes.”
We (my 2 boys and I) do a family 10 minute tidy. This is where we start at one end of the house and only focus 10 minutes in each room. Because the 3 of us do it together it is easy to get through quickly and keep them on task. After the rooms are done they are free to relax or play. The boys are 12 and 5.
“Start by picking up all of the laundry… ALL the laundry!!… Can you see any more laundry?… I can still see some more laundry… there’s still laundry under the trampoline… there’s laundry sticking out under your bed… No, where does laundry go?… is this clean or dirty? (x5) … well if it’s clean, put it away. … oh, suddenly it’s dirty is it?… well, where does that go?…get that t-shirt… get that sock by the door… yes, I know that’s your brother’s beaver kit, it could do with a wash… yes, I know he doesn’t go to beavers anymore, the kit could still do with a wash. … I can see another sock…” etc. You’d think the boy did his own laundry, wouldn’t you?!
I really didn’t make many comments – or even supervise the room cleaning! I just told them to clean it up, or if they preferred, I WOULD CLEAN IT FOR THEM! I never in 4 kids ever had one for them want me to clean the room for them! Amazing!
I say it in English, my mom would holler it in French. SO HELP ME GOD I GAVE YOU LIFE AND I CAN TAKE IT AWAY. French was scarier because we knew she meant business when the French started to fly. My kids will run for the hills when I start to mutter in French.
I have pretty much said everything in the book when it comes to my kids cleaning. They are now 14 and 19 and it’s still an issue. By far my favorite is “how can you even live in here? I can’t walk in here without stepping on something” to which my daughter replied “Every time I clean it up I can’t find anything. Like this I know where everything is.” I motivated my son to clean his room by letting him keep all the money made off his toys at the yardsale. Money’s a great motivator for a teen.
I thought this was going to be a truly funny, juicy read that I could relate to… but now just I feel bad because you all sound so nice about it! I am grateful that atleast my youngest of my three children, gets it! He is 9 and sees the value in being neat, clean and organized. He has to share a room though, with his super slobby brother, age 11. The kind of nonchalant slobbiness that makes other people gringe while he relaxes comfortably in the mist of it all. Really, they remind me of “The odd couple” -an 80s show. Their older sister, age 13, has grown to prefer and what appears to be, enjoy her gross room because it is just that – hers. Ugh! I hate nagging. Besides, it doesn’t work. So I need a huge motivator instead, but what? My daughter wants friends over but not even that will get her to clean. Reverse psychology? Hypnosis?
I didn’t MAKE the mess. Why do you think I should have to clean it up?
What I said (and it worked wonders) was ….. You have exactly one hour to get your room clean , after that I will head in with a trashcan and I don’t care whats misplaced , I will pitch it! Two boys and they kept their rooms clean… after the first time around with my trash can. It made believers out of them!
I have three boys that all play sports so my house smells like a locker room. But recently when I was supervising the cleaning of my middle son’s room, we found a pile of his hockey clothes from his last game (which was a month ago) and I had to convince him that the season was over so it was okay to “wash the luck out of them”.
I had to smile as I read these comments. I’m now a grandma and only occasionally help the grand kids declutter. Love the little Coo coo clock.
I don’t have any kids, but I was one once. I shared a room with my sister for much of my childhood. My mother would always tell us to “go pick up your room”. Our smart-butt response, “I can’t. It’s too heavy.” I am not saying I am a messy person, but my mother used to wish she had bought two houses, one for her and one for us girls (there were 4 of us).
My sister was sort of neat (especially as she got older) and when we were cleaning the room, we would divide it in half. I normally pushed as much as possible onto her side of the room.
My husband is also a messy, and I find I get frustrated at his clutter but not my own. Mine makes sense to me, his is just random. I do find a lot of change on the floor from his pockets, though.
My mantra was if you don’t have all the pieces it isn’t a toy, it’s just a piece of trash.
🤣🤣🤣This post is priceless. Do I sound like you or do you sound like me? Who came first?🤣🤣🤣
I read the comments and I remembered my own childhood. Nobody ever asked me to clean my room. First of all, I didn’t have a room. I slept in the open area at the top of the stairs. It was totally open. There was a window and the heater(for the entire level) was at the center of the room. In winter time, my brother and I took turns heating pennies on top of the stove and then, we’d press the hot pennies into the ice on the inside of the window to make designs. Grandmom swept the floors, all of them were bare wood. I had nothing to “put away”. My mother borrowed books to read to us(from the library). Nobody ever showed me how to “keep house”. I never saw any work being done. It happened while I was in school. Grandmom was too old and ill to leave the house to work. My parents both worked many long hours. My favorite day of the week was Thursday. Mom shopped on Thursday and always brought home ONE candy bar. We’d all try to guess what kind it was:Mars bar? Milky Way? Snickers? After dinner, Mom presented that candy bar to my father and he would cut that bar into five pieces, one for each of us. When I grew up and realized I didn’t know how to keep house I asked the librarian for a book on the subject. She handed me a book on interior design because she couldn’t understand that anyone would not know how to “keep house”. I’m teaching myself. Still working at it.
Hello, Florence!!
I am Florence, too! I found Dana’s first book at the library August 2021. It actually made sense to my 68 year old frugal, distractable, and ‘efficient’ brain. My house certainly isn’t magazine perfect, but after 49 years of being responsible for our family home, the dishes are done, the floors swept, the laundry put away, and all counters wiped off daily! If I would just put the 5 minute pickup into action a little more often…! For over 18 months, my house has been good enough to allow anyone in the house on a minute’s notice!! Never before in my life has that happened! (To be completely honest, I usually have a stack on the dining room table to transfer to the chair in the bedroom, but that only takes an actual minute!!!)
Mother and Daddy got married in the Great Depression, so we were always frugal. Mother preferred to be outside gardening when the weather was good, so winter was the only real housecleaning time. That left 3/4 of the year to be much less focused on the house! She taught us how to do, but didn’t do much more than require us to clean our rooms once a week and pitch in on everything else to be done on a small farm. Lots of things stayed around which were reused or repurposed, but some stuff was still there when we bought the place from our siblings. It took a long time for me to realize that empty space was valuable, too. Dana’s first two books have made a lasting change in our lives! The kids will have a lot less to deal with when they have to settle things when we are gone.
I tell my 11 year old granddaughter, “Start with anything made of fabric. If it is clean, put I where it belongs. If it is dirty, put it your dirty clothes hamper. ” Probably the next most frequent phrase is “Why are there clothes under your bed?” I have yet to get a satisfactory answer to that one.
I know I’m several years late to the party, but I have a 6 year-old, a 3 year-old and a baby, so I’m finding this post at exactly the right time. My house thanks you. 😆
Things I find myself saying constantly:
“No, don’t just throw it on top, open the drawer and put it where it goes.”
“I love that you love reading, but we don’t have time to read every book before we put it on the shelf.”
“Remember how we’re not supposed to bring food into our room? So then how did this wrapper get here? Ok well even if it somehow neither of you put it there, I still need you to throw it away.” “They can’t all be your favorites.” “We have enough drawings to cover the entire house inside and out. We can’t keep all of them. No we can’t ‘just get a bigger house’.” 🤦♀️
Can we please talk about that “sheep clock”?
OMG I love it.
My kids are long grown up and gone, but I have a borderline hoardy husband. (Like, who needs 6 hammers)
I always ask him “when is the last time you even touched it, let alone use it”
I can’t remember exactly, but it’s likely I said something like, “ARGHHHHHHHH!”
My daughter was by far the worst. Son was reasonably neat.
I specifically remember one time she told me, “I don’t feel comfortable when everything is picked up and neat.” She was probably around 9 years old.
You left out the leaf rake – “Don’t make me get my leaf rake to get that stuff out from under your bed!” My boys hated that one.
My mom’s was “This place is a pigpen”. For my daughter I bought 2 large green trash cans the ones that go outside so she’d have enough room to put clean and dirty clothes so nothing was on the floor or strewn everywhere, and clean clothes wouldn’t end up in the hamper getting rewashed for nothing. Once she had the clean ones put away I could take that can away, once all her dirty laundry was done the other one could leave and she could use a normal size hamper. She went to college & moved out before I could test the system long enough but no clothes on the floor or the bed was a win. She hated having those ugly things in her room. Maybe someone else can try this and see if it works.
Hi Dana, thanks for reposting this one. Fun to catch up on new comments.
I was reminiscing of when my kids were young. I said many of the same things above, and heard many of the same responses. Isn’t that amazing!
I was shocked to hear so many say what my daughter always said, (and still does in her 20’s), if it is neat, she can’t find anything. Messy is more relaxing. Not knowing where stuff is stressful. I don’t believe it but hey she is consistent. My son’s room is still has he left it. He sleeps in there when visits but nothing has left. It is a childhood room with every scrap of paper in its place. Now that he bought a house I AM HOPING he will go through and take what he wants and clean out the rest because he will have a better understanding owning his own (and not moving around the county…)
I love them and wanted to clean their rooms so they can be comfortable when they stay with us, but hubby insists it is their rooms and their private spaces to keep their things so…. Now I await many years down the road when we want to move and I tell them to Clean OUT your room. I will be doing more than just dusting and vacuuming what floor space I can reach!
Anyway fun to read and share my own experience. Nothing in life is perfect. So as long as there are no firebazards, old food, or illegal activities they can have stuff and stuff and stuff fill their rooms.
Because my messy 16 year old son was raised in my clutter, I cannot get too upitty about his messy room. I have since found Minimal Mom, Cas the Clutterbug and A Slob Comes Clean and my main floor is peaceful and generally “15 minutes from company” clean.
I took advice from a child rearing specialist who said, “we give them a room of their own, and then tell them what to do with it”. I had other battles with him that were far more important to me than keeping his room clean. I limited the number of dishes that we kept available so he could not have too many up in his room or he had to eat with out a fork (I hid a couple in the back of the drawer so the rest of us could have forks if he had not brought them down). I just told him I would not come in to his room if I was going to break something on me if I tripped over the clutter.
But the best was when his friends shamed him about how bad his room was and he cleaned it, and it has stayed mostly clean since.
We mostly deal with toys in the common area & the little kids room, where most the toys for everyone get played with.
I generally just say, ” go clean up” and I go do something else
If I come by to check I’ll say “lookin good” or “get moving!”
“If you have too much, which ones are going to another kid?”
I tend to get overwhelmed when everything’s put away and still cluttered. I generally start with the catch all bins, and have had to start making some hard for me choices.
We got rid of 75% of our costume box which was played with a lot by us & especially when friends were over. But the friends never cared to help put it away so we could find what we wanted.
Kids chose to keep musical instruments instead, and I actually was pretty proud of them, as I’d love to be a more creative bunch.