Major Shake Up

I just had an epiphany, (major psychotic break) a revelation if you will.  As I awoke to another day of chaos I decided it was too much.

Today's morning began with the girls fighting over who got to have Monty sleep with them and Teddy sleeping through Sashsa peeing all over his floor.  As I stood in Teddy's room, trying to rescue his school backpack and uniform which had been left on the floor I listened to them argue in the kitchen over who was allowed to have a waffle or not.

I must admit that I snapped a bit.  It wasn't pretty.  The dog ran and hid under the table. Words were said.  Now I have to come up with an alternate meaning to the "horse you road in on" but there was a positive result.  I had a discussion  - can't say conversation because they weren't allowed to say a God.Damn.thing. about the concept of First World and Third World problems.  Connor was horrified about kids who not only don't eat waffles but may not eat for the day.  I think Teddy was formulating a list of weapons found in HALO in his mind but he was almost able to fake his attention.  I will give him some props for that.  Tessi was still pissed about the damn cat.  So while I was imparting knowledge about others suffering my kids weren't understanding that was my clue that they too were about to suffer.  Kids are very smart unless they are very, very stupid.

This brought me to my grand design change.  My house is bloody mess because my kids have too much crap and don't care one whit about it.  They will clean something up only if directly ordered to.  There is no desire to live outside mess just to do what they want.  Soooo, now instead of me coming up with lists of chores to be done I will start assigning rooms to be cleaned.  Each will get a room.  Before tv, computer, any bloody thing, their assigned room must be done.  Since they don't know what needs to be done, in the beginning they will have to have me inspect it every 2 minutes.  Only when these items are done can fun stuff be utalized.

Right now the 3 of them are scrambling to empty the dishwasher, clear and wipe the kitchen table, take out recyling trash and empty kids laundry baskets.  Teddy just countered with the classic, "But we only have 10 minutes until we leave"  to which I responded, "Well, I guess you're kind of screwed then, aren't you?"

The best part though, the piece de resistance, is the bedroom cleaning.  Each of them will be assigned to clean the OTHER'S room.  There will be a box for trash and a box for items that it's not sure where they belong.  The owner of the room will be allowed to go through the trash box before removal.  Now if the owner said room has items that he knows he will get in trouble for having...say candy wrappers, soda cans or his Touch, perhaps he should remove them before his eagle-eyed sister, on the hunt for WMD that she can destroy his ass with, finds them and squeals on him like a stuck pig.

I'm going to spend some time creating check lists of items to done in a room cleaning.  Kitchen: wipe table, sweep floor, Living Room: remove shoes, fold blankets, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I may even laminate them to give the lists that shiny glow of authority.

Now, will this make them appreciate things and care about the world around them?  Probably not.  However as I'm still coming down off of my adrenalin pumping rage I realize that I don't care.  They will understand cause and affect though, I'll make damn sure of that. 

Cause Mommy to crack and the affect will be Hell on Earth.