My Kids Don't Clean, But I Do!!!

Back in November, I posted about how My Kids Are Slobs and my cute little chore chart that was a total bust.  Well, here we are two months later and nothing has changed.  They are still slobs and it is still driving me CrAzY!!!  I am so tired of being the nagging mom who follows them around saying "Clean this up, Put that away, Stop making a mess!!"  The only other option is to do it myself, but then I get frustrated and they don't learn to take any responsibility.

The good news is it's not just my kids!  I got some comments from my original post from moms who shared the same frustration.  Plus, I had lunch today with some fabulous ladies from my Bible Study group and we had a rather lengthy discussion about this topic because their kids are slobs, too!!!  (No offense, ladies!)  I got some good ideas today and I'm still mulling them over to try and come up with a solution that will work (or at least help) with my kids.

In the meantime, though, I had just had enough today. I had to do something. We are extremely blessed to have a wonderful house.  The garage of the house was converted into a "rec room" many years ago and, today, serves as the girls' playroom.  It is a very large room and 90% of the time, it looks like a bomb went off inside it.  I ask them to clean it up.  I beg them to clean it up.  I threaten them.  I offer rewards.  All of it to no avail.  I tend to be a bit of a real neat freak, so it drives me insane.  I decided to take matters into my own hands this afternoon and I spent two hours cleaning and organizing the girls' playroom.

It went from this:

To this:

Now the only problem is that I don't want to let my kids go in there to play - EVER!!! :-)

If you have any suggestions for me - chore charts, rewards vs. punishment, etc. -I'm all ears!

I've cracked the top 50 and made it to #49!!  Keep voting please!!!