Our kids are slobs. Really. I’m not proud of this or ashamed to admit it at this point. The bottom line is that they know how to get things out but they don’t know how to put things away. Obviously, a trait I failed to teach them early in life. We do a deep clean of bedrooms about every 6 months. Its starting to get better as they get older, but its still frustrating.
The worst offender? Emma Jane. You would think the “girl” would be neat and tidy – not a chance. I think she does better when no one can see her floor or dare step in her room.
The last two weeks have been especially frustrating for me, for some reason there has been more clutter in the house. I decided that I wanted to take a day, just by myself and do a little spring cleaning so I scheduled a “vacation” day from work this last Monday. Well, best laid plans…..Emma ended up sick and couldn’t go to school on Monday (good thing I took the day off of work, I guess). I still tried to make the most of this by tackling the worst room in the house – Emma’s room.
I had in my mind that if I could organize all of the little girl things in labeled storage boxes, life would be a little more organized for the little diva. We made a trip to WalMart (I hate that store), all I said to little Miss Em is that I wanted to get some boxes to put things in and that we would put a sign on them she could find the things she wanted to play with. That was the extent of the conversation about the boxes. When we got home, she sat on her bed as I tried to put things into said boxes. I made great progress. By the time the boys came home from school, I was done (not complete but done as is emotionally done). I asked Em to pick up the last few items of clothes and such from her floor and I proceeded the afternoon drill of homework, etc. I figured I would finish a little later.
Later that night, I went to help Em get ready for bed. The floor of her room was empty and closet door closed. I was a little scared but then I opened to see this… 
Neatly stacked boxes, with lids on them. Keep in mind, the boxes were still being filled when I stopped the project.
As I looked closer…
This is her “Radio”
Box of Babys…
And finally (don’t worry I had to ask for help on this one too)…
Activities (or actifadese). A box that includes games, coloring books and work books.
Not exactly how I had envisioned labeling these boxes but it does the trick and the fact that she did this all by herself is more than I could have asked for when I said “Clean your room”!
