Cleaning House: Two Weeks in...

Our 14 Year Old's Room  

As usual I didn't have the foresight to take before pictures to show what we were dealing with with the kids just refusing to do the minimum of keeping there rooms at a reasonable state of clean. Many days the accumulated mess was making it hard to see the floor, and it was spilling out of the doorways into the halway, and trailing and gradually trickling into other areas of the house, even the kitchen and the yard has scattered remains of where the children had recently been playing and decided to go on to another task just leaving whatever was taken out to come back to at a later, undisclosed date...which usually meant never, or at least not within the next few days. 

Our Two Younger
 Boys Rooms

So during the month of July they are required to keep their rooms clean, and this is the result that we have been seeing in the last two weeks. Each room has a jar with a dollar for each day. So far our oldest has lost two dollars and this is what his room has been looking like as we walk down the hall during the day. Our younger two have struggled a little with the concept and it has been a little more difficult to convince them that this is an important task. They have lost four dollars so far, but typically, this is the usual state of their room for the past few days. They have each needed some encouragement to comply, and it is not perfect, but being able to see the color of the carpet and not step on a sharp Lego well placed so that the pointed end is up just waiting to dig into the soft spot in the arch of my foot. So far so good...