A few months back, Katie and I were disagreeing as to the cleanliness of her room. She refused to keep it clean. Once a week I go through really clean their rooms and they are required to maintain it the rest of the week. I had spent most of the day cleaning the house and was stunned at the amount of toys they had collected.
That evening while I was making dinner Katie and Jack played in Katie's room. After dinner we went to go get pj's for the shower and it looked like Geoffrey the Giraffe from Toys R Us crapped in her room. I was so angry. I told her after her shower she would clean it up. She refused. So I went to the garage grabbed trash bags and literally dumped the toy box, every baby doll, barbie, block, princess dress in the bags.
She was yelling at me to stop. I told her if she didn't want to clean her room I would throw all her toys in the trash. She cried herself to sleep. I was mad she wouldn't clean her room, broken-hearted I made her cry, and slap wore out it was 4 trash bags worth of toys. I left the bags in the kitchen so she would have to see it everyday. This happened on a Friday trash day is not till Thursday and I truly did not know what I was going to do with the toys.
Sunday afternoon my 5 year started bartering for toys. Mommy can I have a sleepin' toy. I have been a good girl and helped you clean the living room. OK fair enough you want to redeem yourself and earn back your toys you may pick one toy out of the bags. You would have thought she had just won the lottery. The only thing I did not take from her in her room was her books. Those are not toys and she will always be able to keep those.
As the week went on she earned back some of her toys. But she also had to give some back. I busted her trying to steal some out of the bag. She was ever smart enough to try and ask if she could give some of her toys to Jack, because if Jack had them she could still play with them. When I busted her for sneaking toys out of the bag she had to give back the toys she took and one she earned.
Over all I felt she had learned her lesson and I spent the better part of Thursday putting the toys back. I went through them and took advantage of getting rid of some. So Thursday after noon when she came home from pre-school she was mortified to find the bags were gone. Trying not to cry she asked me where her toys were. I asked her if she had checked her room? Her face lit up like Christmas. She ran up to check, realized all the important treasures had returned. She even came back downstairs and said Thank You Mommy!!!
I know she has learned something in all of this but I learned something too......how really smart my daughter is. She is never allowed to keep toys under her bed. I check it at anytime. Any toys I find under there are mine for an undetermined amount of time. Because I checked it so frequently and it was always clean I got out of the habit of checking it. After the episode above, if Katie has a very treasured item that no one can have she hides it under the bed. When she cleans her room she leaves them under her pillow and after I have checked the under the bed. She puts it back under the bed. If I find it and take it she know she will get it back and what safer place can it be but with Mommy.
The funniest part to this whole experience is Jack his three year old mind kills me. He observed this whole experience and I think at some point figured out Katie's plan to hide her toys was a great idea. How do I know this you wonder.....First of all, in Jack's room his bed consists of a mattress only on the floor for his safety. He has hardwood floors and is a 360 sleeper. Meaning at any given time his body can do all geometric angles. For fear he would hurt himself if he fell out of bed. He is only inches of the ground.
All that to say Jack can not hide things under his bed. So what does he do......he slips them under the big race track rug in the center of his room. Jack has a few treasured toys, but he is mostly a book worm. He loves them. If you tell him to pack his special bag we are going somewhere over half of it is books. So I the unsuspecting person go into his room and stub my toe on a rug only because it is suddenly and inch higher than when I first stepped on it. I have dumped laundry, almost fell, almost cursed in pain.
When I asked him to move it, put the book back in the shelf he said no Mommy when you read to me I want to be ready and no one knows its there. Well he is right no one knows its there because I still trip over it. One day I pulled up the rug and was stunned at what was under there. I put all the toys away. Jack was so mad. When I had left the room I stepped off where he couldn't see me and I watched him put all the treasured items back under the rug. He never did that until Katie's toy episode. All I have to do is threaten to take his toys away or rattle the trash bags and he cleans up.
Over all it was a good learning experience for everyone. Now if I could just stop hurting my toes on the treasures under the rug we would all be happy.
Maddie goes to the doctor Thursday (pulmonologist), we'll see what he says.
TTFN
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