Clean Your Room!

With Miss Independent and Little Miss home from camp ( where they had a fantastic time) and the fact that between them and Miss Thinker they had managed to COMPLETELY trash their room. I figured it was time to do some good old fashioned yelling. Even though My Beloved was asleep and I had a headache, I yelled.

'RIGHT! Get in this room and clean it up!'  The girls walked in to their room huffing and puffing as they went. I lowered my voice then to an inside one and reminded them that I wanted it clean. I wanted everything off the floor and everything put where it belonged. I then told them that if it was a mess when I came back in I would throw everything in the bin!

It was more of a threat than a possibility, at first at least, until for the fourth time in three hours I had to tell the girls to 'get in to it' the fourth time they had gone outside and Miss Independent had actually managed to climb a tree! Things had been done in the room, but not an awful lot and I realised it wasn't going to unless something serious occurred.

Switching off the mains would not work in this particular situation  but garbage bags would and i grabbed the whole roll of them and marched back into the girls room.

'I gave you ample time to do this.' I barked at them as I picked up shoes, books, toys, clothes, bed sheets and school bags of the floor and stuffed them in the bags.  Miss Independent sat on the edge of the toy box silently staring at everything that was going into the bags. Little Miss stood near her bed, thumbnail in between her teeth watching her school folders and uniform get shoved into the bag.

I felt like a bit of a bastard but I had a point to prove and it needed to be proven there and then. So I kept going grabbing at anything and everything touching the floor. Thankfully Miss Thinker was doing just that, thinking, and ran around the room grabbing everything that was hers and putting it up off the floor. I managed to fill three garbage bags. The pillow and doona filled one.

'Ash.' I called out to the Man Child who knew better than to keep a cranky mother waiting appeared pretty quickly.
'Put these bags in the trailer please.'I said and I winked he grabbed two, looked at me confused and walked out of the room. I followed him out and whispered, 'Put them in my room and shhhhh!'

'Why?' he asked

'So the girls get a fright.'

'Why?'

'Don't worry son.'  I sighed 'Just do it please.'

After listening to the girls cry for a few minutes I decided to save more heartache and let them know they had a chance to get their stuff back.  But it could not, under ANY circumstances seem like a backflip on the punishment. Luckily I remembered I had printed some 'clutter jail' cards out I found over at iMOM, a site a friend had shared with me on FB. I knew they would come in handy one day, and they did.

Putting on a brave face. Little Miss was a bit ripped off. The cards she picked to earn her stuff back
were pretty much the WORST cards that you could pick. Dishes for 3 days, Garbage man
for five days, fold four baskets of washing AND bail set at $5. Luckily for her I will consider
everything she does as $5 worth and she gets everything back before school starts... she lost her school stuff!

Miss Independent took it the hardest and was very happy to learn she could earn
her things back (she lost three pairs of shoes and her school bag in the 'round up').
Her cards were clean the bathroom, make your parents bed for four days, do two hours
 yard work and vacuum the carpet. She completed her chores except the yard work which I
will let her think I have forgotten about (shhhhh) so she gets out of it.

Miss Thinker lost very little but she REALLY wanted jobs too, so her pair of shoes and doll
have bail set at $3 and she had to clean the lounge room floor of toys. Her $3 was 'paid off by drying up.

It is true what they say. Parenthood, can be at times one hell of a bluff!  Lucky I have a great poker face!  ;)