In general I am a tidy person: I like things to be orderly. Everything has a place, and that's where it lives: no messy piles, clutter everywhere, or disorganization.
So in the past my house was always quite neat (if not necessarily
clean, because I hate cleaning, especially floors), even with an extremely slobby husband.
But then Hurricane R came to town. She loves exploring the house, which means pulling everything out of its place, then leaving it on the floor. At first I tried to pick up after her, but soon I found it too frustrating: I was constantly tidying, then having all my work destroyed within minutes. (These pictures show what R did to a tidy house within about 15 minutes of waking up.)
So now I don't bother picking up until she goes to bed; I just step around the clutter and piles as I go about my day. It looks bad, which makes me a little sad, but since the alternative is constantly losing my temper, it's the best solution. It's times like these I am grateful for B's slobbiness, because he really doesn't care what the house looks like and never comments on its messiness in any way whatsoever. (Husbands who do nag their wives about an untidy house when a toddler lives there really deserve what they get.)
we've been trying to get P to pick her stuff up after herself. Sometimes it works. Other times I lose my mind. Good thing she's in daycare for most hours of most days
ReplyDeleteHaha, actually R is starting preschool soon (just 4 hours a week for now, we'll see how it goes), partly for that reason. Being a working mother has some definite upsides I guess!
DeleteEvery time Ginny gets bored we make a game of picking up the toys and books and sing the clean up song. Especially once she started putting things IN and not just out. We clean between each room move. I think its important for her to see cleaning as a normal part of our day. She also likes "helping" with the dishwasher and she helps put her clothes in the washer. It takes more time but it means she'll do it indepedntly sooner and more willingly.
ReplyDeleteR loves helping with the washer too (we don't have a dishwasher). How do you organize the cleaning? R just wanders the house freely, and doesn't generally have that long of an attention span. Like she'll go to the bookcase, pull off a few books, look at them, and then suddenly veer over to her toys, or the kitchen to take out tupperware, or her room. Do you mean before you go out somewhere? I suppose I could try enlisting her to help before bed, but by that time she's usually tired, grumpy and not that cooperative (as am I).
DeleteI'm not a very structured person, but I found myself getting worn down through out the say because Ginny would get borex after 5 minutes and leave a huge mess for me to clean up when we just used a toy box. Now we keep her toys organized into boxes (stuffed animals, play food, electronic toys, puzzles) and then then there are the "readily available toys" - one or two of each type that sit on a shelf she can reach. I rotate these toys every few days. Cleaning up 5 toys is fast and easy. Then we also try to only get out one box at a time. I think having access to everything was causing her to brunt out and get bored too quickly.
DeleteAll of that to say- Ive organized it so that the size of mess she can make is limited to begin with, and cleaning between boxes is easy for Ginny to recognize.
DeleteOh I see. That is a great idea. I just reorganized R's toys into small boxes (the big toy box was too hard for her to access), so removing/rotating them would be pretty easy now. I certainly will try that.
DeleteMostly she doesn't play with her toys though. She likes playing with books, CDs/DVDs (we have a lot of pirated ones from when we lived in China so I let her play with them), clothes, various household objects...Most of the mess is just her generally creating chaos out of order, and even if I threw out all her toys it wouldn't help that much, unless I also removed everything else and left her in a barren, empty room. (And didn't feed her: each meal results in yet another cleaning, of her and the surrounding area). Maybe Ginny is just much neater!