Does the mess get better as kids get older? What age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Around 8 years or so, I noticed a decrease in the amount of toys. That did help.

+1.

[Anonymous]

We have always kept a clean house but my DH is a neat freak. We have a PT nanny/housekeeper come 3-4x per week and we have deep cleaning every other week.

I’m a SAHM of 3 and our house is definitely messier since I’m home with kids vs when I used to work and we were out of the house when we were at work.

We must know clean people because all our friends have tidy homes. I would say our friends all have housekeeping help. Some have a FT housekeeper come daily to one that has bimonthly. I remember I used to host after housecleaners came.

[Anonymous]

Pp again. I think there are messy people and organized people.

I have been to a home with elementary, middle and high school and their home is a disaster. There are just papers and miscellaneous crap everywhere. Toys get replaced with papers, notebooks and binders. Their family room had literally a pile of notebooks and papers about 2 feet high.

I admit I am a messy person. If I were not married to a neat freak and had a housekeeper, our house would be a giant mess.

[Anonymous]

My house is cleaner now than it was before kids. Am I the only one? I just didn’t give much thought to housekeeping and organizing my things until kids came in to the picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids must play differently than some of yours. My 5 and 7 year old just today had a lego village next to a magnatile castle with a variety of different figurines living there. They had created some props with paper and markers which were spread around. They were cooking a castle feast with their toy food and had dressed themselves up for the feast.

This one toy at a time thing wouldn’t work. Unless you all have very young kids still?

I don’t care what happens in the playroom or their bedrooms, as long as it’s picked up before the vacuum runs. I just limit what comes out of the playroom and bedrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As you can see from responses, people who couldn’t control toddlers’ messes also can’t control teens’ messes. My house was never a mess a growing up at any age and my house with current kids now has never been a mess at any age

I think people place different values on neatness v. creativity. Some people think that kids should be allowed to play freely, pulling toys from all over and making the biggest lego/magnatile/LOL doll village ever, because that encourages creativity. And it should stay for days because they'll keep using it. Others value neatness and organization more and would never allow that to happen. Only a few things out at a time and everything gets put away at the end of the day. Up to you where you draw the line.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other. We probably lean toward the former, but sometimes I wonder if I'm shortchanging my kids not teaching them enough organization and neatness. I think you can't have it all -- if you're extremely neat, you probably are sacrificing something in terms of creativity. If you give the kids free rein, you can't really expect your house to snap back into a neat-as-a-pin state at the end of the day.

+1 (and we fall on the messy end of the spectrum, with 3 kids 7 and under who have many projects going in daily). I understand the way this is phrased probably makes those who prioritize neatness a bit defensive/ I think it’s half what you prioritize and also half how much time you spend at home. I SAH and have a toddler, so the house is messier than it was when I worked and the baby was at daycare; it’s much much messier on days like Monday when everyone was home.

[Anonymous]

i am a tidy freak and we live in an open concept house with no bedroom. When DS (8) was a toddler and in K, it was easy to enforce the "clean up a toy when it's done or before bed" rule. But now he's his own person and he shouldn't have to start and finish each task before bed or before starting another one -- any more than we do as adults.

He is a huge lego user - and has several huge sets. He builds and rebuilds them over and over, and his bigger sets (5000+ pieces) take a few weeks of after school building for several hours at a time. No surprise, he gets bored after some time each night and wants to do something else. It would be bizarre if i made him keep working on it over a period of weeks before being "allowed" to pull out another toy. Other stuff currently in active use in our home: an adult jigsaw puzzle he pulled out tonight that we both worked on for an hour, a small handheld logic puzzle game that he's been fiddling with while we watched jeopardy, and a few fully built star wars legos that he regularly returns to and acts out big battle scenes - so they end up in active use around the house. I'm sure there is other stuff around the house too.

My activities that are currently out for my own use: Embroidery at the foot of the sofa, the shared jigsaw puzzle that he pulled out and a stack of cards that i use every couple days.

Just like it would be weird and anxiety-inducing and over structured to make me finish and put away each activity before moving onto the next, it's weird to oversee his personal activities so tightly that he can't come and go from hobbies. Again, he is a fully formed person at this age. However, a couple times a week we do a "big clean" where we go back to mostly baseline.

And again, I am a neat freak and this is still where we ended up as a family. Definitely not messy by any stretch, but none of this BS "a toy goes away before a new one comes out" rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get the one toy at a time thing either. What happens if they get out another toy while you are putting the baby down for a nap or you are in the shower? Do you punish them?

No, they get told to take care of what they had out before, then they can go back to what they just got out.

What if they start playing with things that aren’t toys? Is that allowed?

Depends on what they grabbed. If it’s not a toy, then they either should already know whether they can play with it, or they should have asked first.

What if they have to go to the bathroom? Do they have to pick up the toys they were playing with before they leave the room?

Nope, they can leave it, as long as they come back to it after a bathroom (or snack) break.

Or do you make them come back and play the same game when they are done?

I don’t make anyone play with anything.

They aren’t allowed to decide from the bathroom that maybe they would like go to their room to look at books for a little bit and come back to the legos later?

If it’s in the bedroom or playroom, sure. If they brought something out into the rest of the house? No, clean it up first, then go read. But legos and other small pieces don’t come out into the rest of the house, so it’s moot.

I don’t know. This seems like a lot of work.

It’s less work long term, because kids learn to keep their messes contained to their own areas, and they learn to be considerate to others while learning to clean up after themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As you can see from responses, people who couldn’t control toddlers’ messes also can’t control teens’ messes. My house was never a mess a growing up at any age and my house with current kids now has never been a mess at any age

I think people place different values on neatness v. creativity. Some people think that kids should be allowed to play freely, pulling toys from all over and making the biggest lego/magnatile/LOL doll village ever, because that encourages creativity. And it should stay for days because they'll keep using it. Others value neatness and organization more and would never allow that to happen. Only a few things out at a time and everything gets put away at the end of the day. Up to you where you draw the line.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other. We probably lean toward the former, but sometimes I wonder if I'm shortchanging my kids not teaching them enough organization and neatness. I think you can't have it all -- if you're extremely neat, you probably are sacrificing something in terms of creativity. If you give the kids free rein, you can't really expect your house to snap back into a neat-as-a-pin state at the end of the day.

See, I’m fine with that kind of mess in bedrooms or the playroom. Those are kid areas. As long as the floor can be vacuumed (bedroom) or swept and mopped (playroom) once a week, that’s all I care.

But the rest of the house? You don’t bring out more than you can carry, and it goes back into the bedroom or playroom when you’re done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i am a tidy freak and we live in an open concept house with no bedroom. When DS (8) was a toddler and in K, it was easy to enforce the "clean up a toy when it's done or before bed" rule. But now he's his own person and he shouldn't have to start and finish each task before bed or before starting another one -- any more than we do as adults.

He is a huge lego user - and has several huge sets. He builds and rebuilds them over and over, and his bigger sets (5000+ pieces) take a few weeks of after school building for several hours at a time. No surprise, he gets bored after some time each night and wants to do something else. It would be bizarre if i made him keep working on it over a period of weeks before being "allowed" to pull out another toy. Other stuff currently in active use in our home: an adult jigsaw puzzle he pulled out tonight that we both worked on for an hour, a small handheld logic puzzle game that he's been fiddling with while we watched jeopardy, and a few fully built star wars legos that he regularly returns to and acts out big battle scenes - so they end up in active use around the house. I'm sure there is other stuff around the house too.

My activities that are currently out for my own use: Embroidery at the foot of the sofa, the shared jigsaw puzzle that he pulled out and a stack of cards that i use every couple days.

Just like it would be weird and anxiety-inducing and over structured to make me finish and put away each activity before moving onto the next, it's weird to oversee his personal activities so tightly that he can't come and go from hobbies. Again, he is a fully formed person at this age. However, a couple times a week we do a "big clean" where we go back to mostly baseline.

And again, I am a neat freak and this is still where we ended up as a family. Definitely not messy by any stretch, but none of this BS "a toy goes away before a new one comes out" rule.

I wouldn’t have my projects all over the house, nor would kids. For me, those belong in certain areas. My projects are in my room, and they return there when I’m done. Big kid projects that would break if moved (legos, puzzles) stay in kid areas, other projects that can be more easily moved can come out and then be returned. Shared projects (puzzles especially) have specific places (there’s a folding table with a half-completed puzzle right now; loose pieces are in the box, and when we want to spread them out, the other folding table is set up next to the one with the puzzle on it). The only things that everyone does together are board games; monopoly has never lasted more than 4 hours, so it’s put away before bedtime.