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[quote=Anonymous]It was a hard adjustment for me when I had kids because to me a neat house meant calmness. A messy house was stressful and I became stressed all the time with baby and kid stuff all over. I adjusted my expectations along with teaching my kid to clean up after himself. I usually went with a clean up before lunch and a clean up before dinner/bedtime. And yes when he was young (1-2) I did more of the cleaning up, but that changed as he got older. And since cleaning up was always expected, rarely were there fights about it. Cleaning up after oneself is a life skill that I don't think your kids are too young to learn as long as its easy.

My storage solution was simple: a plastic bin with a picture on it. Cars went into the bin with a picture of cars. Trains went into the bin with trains on it. Books went into a bin with a book picture. You mention Legos in the living room. Take a picture of the Legos, tape it on a bin or basket and there you go.

You can also have a "clean up song" that they start associating with cleaning up. When I worked at a preschool many years ago, the teacher would play "Whistle While You Work" from Snow White whenever it was time to clean up. It got to the point where after the first few notes, everyone started cleaning up. If you have an Alexa that would be pretty easy to implement. Or you can do a clapping song. But a three year old can definitely clean up after herself.

And sometimes you just have to roll with it. Right now my son is into creating his own Star Wars stories, he has drawn pictures of the characters and he acts them out, and there are at least a hundred of these paper characters all over the couch and floor of the living room. God forbid I move one because I disrupt the story. So I just step over them and eventually at the end of the day (or story) he picks them all up.

This is a very unique situation for all of us and we've all had to adjust in order to handle things. I know a lot of times when I'm feeling out of control I start cleaning...could that be something you do too? You feel out of control because of the way things are right now so you spend hours every night cleaning? Just another thought.[/quote]

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