We don't have a basement and our house is not a mess. I am teaching my kids to clean up one thing before moving to another thing. I would never stand for our house to be a mess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cleaning up every day doesn’t work. There are half completed crafts, forts, lego buildings, monopoly game on the djnkng table that wasn’t finished....we currently have a puppet theater set up and a bunch of boxes out that my kids were using to build a play area for their hamster. I guess we value creativity over neatness.

Where's the creativity in an unfinished monopoly game? I get the creative process, but it also just sounds like you're lax about cleaning. Which is fine, but don't make it a values thing.

NP We have multiple day monopoly games.

Anonymous wrote:Cleaning up every day doesn’t work. There are half completed crafts, forts, lego buildings, monopoly game on the djnkng table that wasn’t finished....we currently have a puppet theater set up and a bunch of boxes out that my kids were using to build a play area for their hamster. I guess we value creativity over neatness.

Where's the creativity in an unfinished monopoly game? I get the creative process, but it also just sounds like you're lax about cleaning. Which is fine, but don't make it a values thing.

At about 5 years old, my kids stopped just picking up random things and moving them to different places in the house. Once they stopped doing that, it got a lot easier.

If they get out a toy or a game now, there is some kind of purpose to it. So, maybe, like pp, there is a fort or a half done science experiment in the living room, but those take ten minutes to clean up. The stuff that took forever was the random little treasures that were found, carried for two minutes, then abandoned and forgotten somewhere completely illogical.

Cleaning up every day doesn’t work. There are half completed crafts, forts, lego buildings, monopoly game on the djnkng table that wasn’t finished....we currently have a puppet theater set up and a bunch of boxes out that my kids were using to build a play area for their hamster. I guess we value creativity over neatness.

Anonymous wrote:For us the mess disappeared when the kids left for college. The nature of it changes as they get older but there is still stuff. By middle school it was backpacks and sports equipment and coats and homework. Our house is very clean and organized, but there was still plenty of evidence of kids around.

The papers from school are incredible. I swear, there are whole forests coming home in their backpacks every day.

I was pretty militant about “plastic Chinese crap” as described upthread when my first was a toddler. Now my eldest is 7 and I am snowed under in plastic crap. So I don’t know when it gets better but not yet.

Anonymous wrote:I have a 2.5 year old and we have had playdates with kids from age 1 to 5. Everyone’s house seems to be a mess except for those who have a dedicated basement. We have a playroom and try to contain the mess but even our friends with big playrooms also have toys all over the living room and dining room. Legos and tiny toy pieces everywhere. At what age does this get better? Is it more a function of specific families being messy or lax or just the age of having a lot of kid clutter? DH and I cannot seem to agree on how much kid mess is acceptable in our own house and I am wondering what other people do.

2-4 shared toys can come out of the playroom in a basket, bag or whatever, but they go right back into the playroom. Individual toys stay in their rooms.

The mess goes away when they grow out of the toys. But then it sometimes morphs into clothes being a mess especially with boys.

The biggest difference is that as they get older, they start working on longer-term projects that they don’t want taken down. Our house was cleaner when it was just toddler toys that could be stuffed in a bin every night. Now it’s sports gear, science projects still in work, piles of library books for a research paper, massive LEGO projects that can’t be picked up and stuck on a shelf easily, books, books, and more books all over the house, art projects in various stages of completion, the slime-making factory my 9 yr old has going on the kitchen counter. Their bedrooms are small and we try to keep them as clean and calm spaces so the dining room table tends to pay the price instead.

For us the mess disappeared when the kids left for college. The nature of it changes as they get older but there is still stuff. By middle school it was backpacks and sports equipment and coats and homework. Our house is very clean and organized, but there was still plenty of evidence of kids around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a 2 year old and an infant and our house is generally pretty clean. We stay on top of it and the toddler knows she has to put something away before taking something new out. She helps clean up the infant's stuff too. What also helps I'm sure is we just don't have a lot of stuff and everything has a place (even if it's in a basket or bin).

Ha! Your oldest is two!

Wait until you get to the legos, puzzles, art supplies, doll clothes, magnetiles, dress up clothes, etc.

+1 yep.

I mean, we have all that stuff and the OP's kid is the same age as my oldest. The expectation is always going to be the same.

You have little legos for a 2.5 year old? The pieces do get smaller. Your 6 year old may want to leave out every legos he’s put together in the last year like mine does.
I would agree that five year olds are harder to organize than 2 year olds. We take all my two year olds toys which are pretty big and toss them in a tub in a couple of minutes.

Anonymous wrote:I've never had a mess in my house overnight. Kids are 9 and 6 now. They have to clean up everything at the end of each day before bed or they lose privileges (and I clean it up and/or throw it away). Messy houses are simply the result of adults being tolerant of messes.

When they are too young to clean up themselves, you allow only a limited number of toys at a time. Why should 5 more toys be taken out when 8 are already on the floor and not being played with? Like, take some responsibility for your house. Do you stack 16 dirty dishes in the sink before you wash them?

Sorry but I don’t think this is a healthy attitude either.
And, yes, sometimes I leave dishes in the sink so I can go out and enjoy the world. Sometimes I say F it and leave all the toys out and go to bed early with my husband. Sometimes my kids play setup requires all the blankets out to build forts, or more than five toys for their imaginary village. And all this is good.

Anonymous wrote:I've never had a mess in my house overnight. Kids are 9 and 6 now. They have to clean up everything at the end of each day before bed or they lose privileges (and I clean it up and/or throw it away). Messy houses are simply the result of adults being tolerant of messes.

When they are too young to clean up themselves, you allow only a limited number of toys at a time. Why should 5 more toys be taken out when 8 are already on the floor and not being played with? Like, take some responsibility for your house. Do you stack 16 dirty dishes in the sink before you wash them?

Yes, all the time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a 2 year old and an infant and our house is generally pretty clean. We stay on top of it and the toddler knows she has to put something away before taking something new out. She helps clean up the infant's stuff too. What also helps I'm sure is we just don't have a lot of stuff and everything has a place (even if it's in a basket or bin).

Ha! Your oldest is two!

Wait until you get to the legos, puzzles, art supplies, doll clothes, magnetiles, dress up clothes, etc.

+1 yep.

I mean, we have all that stuff and the OP's kid is the same age as my oldest. The expectation is always going to be the same.