Here's how house cleaning usually goes down at my house...the kids make messes, I ask them to clean them up (repeatedly), eventually, I get sick of the mess and I clean it up on my own (angrily). I get sick of hounding and arguing and fighting. It makes me bitter and resentful to just pick up after them, but it's EASIER.
However, this summer, I've had it. This weekend, after they'd make one huge mess and were on their way to another, I kindly warned them that I had seen the toy gobbler in the basement. I had chased him over to the other side of the basement, but that I didn't think it'd be long before he returned to the toy room to eat their toys. It worked. It's as old a trick as the book "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle", or maybe older, but it worked. They raced to the basement to clean up and actually enjoyed the work of outsmarting the gobbler.
Today, it was the same thing. My kids had moved from art, to puzzles, to toys; leaving a disaster in their wake. I had asked and asked for them to clean up the prior messes to no avail. This time, the toy gobbler came without warning. I just told them that I was sorry, but he came, I couldn't stop him, and he gobbled up the art supplies and the puzzles. Somehow, although my kids are smart enough to know that I am the gobbler, the anger and frustration towards the gobbler is directed at the gobbler, not me. It's working. They're cleaning the aforementioned toy mess now. They're plotting how to make me happy to get back the art supplies and the puzzles. All of the angst unites them together in a cause against the gobbler...and I get a cleaner house. Win win.
