My kid’s room is very cluttered, but she keeps the floor clean after some well headed threats by me. I do have to quietly go through her mountains of special stuff covering every surface and purge. If she doesn’t notice it’s gone, it can’t be THAT special.

My kids have to tidy their room for the cleaner once a week. My messiest one (of 3) is my ADHD / hoarder/ mad scientist 12 yo. She has a zillion stuffed animals, and every week she has to put them all in a basket, floors have to be clear, and tops of dresser and desk have to be useable. We do a big clean out twice a year, which is our happy medium, since she gets very emotionally attached to her creations. She also "rents" space from her sister's bedroom. She is constantly creating things out of knickknacks or random art supplies, so during the week it becomes a disaster. Then at least it resets a bit.

Anonymous wrote:Total hellscape. Lego all over the floor, weird creations of putty and string and plastic animals, etc. I did not want to spend the time every day on this issue and they both loved making "set-ups" of villages or whatnot that they actually would play with over time. Both are older now and at some point voluntarily started keeping their rooms fairly neat.

Haha. Thanks for this.

Me - ADHD / messy room. But I’ve gotten a little better recently only because I hired a monthly cleaner so there’s a built in reset. (dH is messy too.)

11 yr old DD - very tidy. Often will leave out some figurines or something but in an orderly way. Has been asking for some additional shelving to help, which I need to order.

7 year old ADHD girl - disaster and I get overwhelmed and don’t know how to help. BUT I hired an orfanxier to work with her once and she got completely hyper focused and worked for 3 hrs and was thrilled. Recently a babysitter helped her organizer her room and she loves it. I think we should just get that babysitter every few weeks for a reset.

I don’t throw my kids’ stuff away without their permission BUT I give them trash bags and say for every bag they fill they get to pick one toy at goodwill. These days my 11 year old really doesn’t want stuff. She typically asks for things like tickets to an event / some sort of experience or like plants for her garden.

Finally, the professional organizer taught me (both for myself and my children) it’s really hard to stare at stuff and say “what should we get rid of?” Instead if you make a pile and say “grab everything from this pile you’d like to keep” it’s weirdly much easier. My 7 year old went through pile after pile of about 15 things where she’d pick about 5-8 of the things to keep.