The MESSY Room

This has been a battle with my girls, cleaning up when they are finished playing. I usually have to walk them through the cleaning process but just recently I realized they are 'playing me'. Last night I told them I would reward them if they could clean up the living room (something I never reward for but it was a test) well they cleaned quickly and correctly without me having them give them any direction. I now know they can do it alone. This morning when they woke up, I told them they could not leave their room until it was clean and if they couldn't get it clean by nap time there would be consequences. I did feed them breakfast at their little table and set up buckets and gave them a bit of help to start out and then I left.


A few hours later this is what the room looked like, it was worse! They dumped everything out that I did help them clean and made more of a mess. So, they ate lunch in their room as well.
Well, nap time came--they have been up in their room for almost 5 hours now with no progress and I did go in there many times and sit with them and walk them through the process but time was up, SO......


















So, I cleaned out their room. Literally, I cleaned out the entire room. I walked in there with trash bags and loaded everything up. Emma said, "mommy, we will clean our room next time"....I took out every toy. I did leave the books because that would be way too much work. The toys were moved to my room---as you can see below and now my room is the messy one.