When I first thought about the idea of writing about messy bedrooms, I was convinced I would start typing and never stop!! But then I remembered the book I had read recently by Lorraine Candy, What's wrong with you Mum?, and I knew I would be able to bring this post to a satisfactory end!
What exactly is it about a messy bedroom that drives parents crazy?.
When I first started experiencing the 'messy bedroom' problem my girls were sharing a bedroom and must have been about 8 and 10. Up until then, I kind of took control of sorting out their bedroom and putting toys and clothes away, making beds and making sure the room was tidy. Why did I do that? Well, for my benefit really, I wanted all the rooms in the house to be clean and tidy and if that meant I had to do it, I did. I didn't really think about handing over the responsibility to them, I just did it. They generally helped with it, but they didn't take ownership or responsibility of it and I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that they were sharing a bedroom. As in, neither one of them wanted to take ownership of it because that would mean doing the other one a favour, and you know what siblings are like!!
However, when they got to about 10 and 12, they put together an amazing powerpoint presentation, rigged it up to the TV and used it to convince my husband and I to give them their own bedrooms. I have no idea why they thought they had to go to such lengths to convince us, but their ingenuity was quite something and their sales pitch was top draw. I didn't tell them that they only had to ask and they could have had their own room as it was more funny watching them present the case 'for'.
Anyhow, once we split them in two and they had their own rooms, I was convinced we would find out who the messy one was, who was the one that was making their joint bedroom a complete mess everyday. I thought I would learn a little more about my girls by watching them in action in their own room. I was fascinated to discover that they are both messy sods! That they never make their beds, they never put their clothes away and they never tidy things away that they have used. So, rather than have 1 bedroom in the house to deal with, I now had two!!! What on earth had I done, making more work for myself.
As they were a bit older, I decided it would no longer by my responsibility to keep their room tidy (crazy I know, you'd think I would have realised this years back, but hey ho), so it became my mission to make them keep their rooms tidy all the time. Wow, I was not ready for the kick back. It wasn't so much that they didn't want to keep their room tidy it was that they didn't 'see' the mess. They didn't see the problem with how their room looked. It was my problem. I took the whole thing personally. These are the things that went through my head every time I walked into their bedroom and saw the 'mess' that they didn't see....
How can they be so disrespectful to my house?
Why are they so messy?
What have I done wrong that they don't see the mess they have made?
Why don't they care about how I feel about their room being in a mess?
How can they treat their clothes like that, when I have done all that washing and made sure they have clean clothes?
By now, I hope you get the idea, me, me, me. It was all about me! I wasn't thinking about them in any of this. I was more bothered about how their room affected me! I even threatened to put them back in the joint room and take their rooms away from them if they didn't keep them clean! I mean, what was I thinking!! This was the first time I had given them the freedom to express themselves, to have their own personal space away from each other and I turned it into a fight pretty much every day. This issue became the bain of my life for a while, the more I focussed on it the more it bothered me. Every time I walked in to their room I walked in with a look of disgust, in the end they didn't even want me to come in their room as they knew I would give them 'the look'. I felt I was getting to breaking point, what was I going to do. At this time, I was listening to the Lorraine Candy book I mentioned at the start of this post and she was describing the exact same problem she went through and guess what she did? She shut the bloody door. Her advice was quite straight forward. If you don't like it, then don't look at it. Shut the door on your way past and forget about it. It's not your problem! Well, this was a game changer for me. I started to shut the door, forget about their rooms and never mention it. It didn't take long before they started to tidy their rooms themselves and take responsibility for their own personal space, bonus and I didn't say a thing. Even better than that though, was the level of stress in my house, it went down ten fold!
Have you ever thought about how much energy you spend on trying to get someone to do something you want, for your benefit! I realised that I was acting out what I had been taught when I was younger. My beliefs about a messy room weren't even my own and boy did I get tired and stressed trying to enforce that belief. When they realised for themselves the benefits of a cleaner bedroom, like, being about to find your Nike Pro shorts that you need for gym, 5 mins before you are about to leave the house or you've lost your favourite earrings in a pile of unwashed clothes that are sat next to your empty wash bin, that's when the real magic happened. Don't get me wrong, they don't have tidy rooms every day, but they do now think about keeping them tidier and give themselves some time over the weekend to reset and that had nothing to do with me.
If you think back to when you were a teen, I wonder how many of you put 'Clean my room' at the top of your to-do-list. I know I didn't. I was more focussed on school, grades, friends, my social life, boys, sport, homework etc etc. I didn't care if my room was tidy or not and the last thing I needed/wanted was to be nagged about it every day.
A messy bedroom is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things and giving up the fight actually improved my relationship with my girls, because I became less controlling (in their eyes), I was welcomed into their room with open arms and helping them now and again by folding some clothes or making the bed became something they actually appreciated me doing for help them. If you know what I mean. Rather than making their bed because I wanted it made, they would ask for help getting their bed made, while they put their clothes away. And of course, I am more than happy to do that now and again, their focus shifted to me 'helping them out' with their room, rather than them doing it because 'I wanted it done'! So next time you see your child's room is a complete mess, just shut the door!!!
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