Raising Organized People

One of my biggest pet peeves-Messes, clutter, and unorganization. I think that teaching my children to clean up after themselves and be organized is one of the most annoying things I have faced in parenting. Olivia already seems to like organization and clean space but she definitely has a long way to go. Romeo on the other hand I swear could live in a landfill. He is very messy and careless, I'm sure part of being a boy, but still. I think its funny how he is that way but when he goes to a messy house of a friend or someone else he lets me know he really dislikes it. Another hard thing is having them do their daily routine and little chores without being reminded. They only have a few things to do but somehow seem to forget quite often. Its crazy because they say that repetition is the best way to remember things but you'd think each day was the first time they were told to brush their teeth or take a shower.

This past school year I made them both weekly charts of their daily routine and they had to check off each thing that they were suppose to do in the morning and then report to me when they were done. No nagging on my part at all, they had a certain time to get it all done by. That worked out quite well. Of course once I stopped doing these charts thinking they had it down, noone could remember a thing. So here we are, back to charts because I hate asking them to do things more than once and constantly nagging for things to get picked up.

I talked to my mother the other day about this and how much it bothers me because it puts a lot of extra stress on me and I, a good amount of the time just end up doing everything myself. My mother said, " I have been telling your brother Dan for over 20 years now not to leave his shoes in front of the door and he still does it when he comes to visit to this day." She said," Sometimes they never get it! I remember her saying to me and my brothers when we were younger that she wonders how our houses would look when we grew up because we made such messes.

Funny thing is, is that all of us are neat people, and my brother Dan well, he never leaves his shoes in front of the door at his own house so we must have learned something even if we didn't show it living with her. Maybe its just the comfort of her and knowing she could take care of it and did it well, not knowing how much she did need us to do our part. Maybe that's how my children feel. Thing is though, I don't think I can stand to see if it happens until they move out, especially with another child on the way. I guess its a work in progress as is everything else when you are raising kids but for now charts it is!