Today I came up with an experiment to try with my daughters. I'm setting up a metaphorical savings account for each of them. They can put "deposits" into their "savings accounts" which can be used to pay for future play dates. I'm excited to see if it accomplishes my goal.
When I was young, my family lived in fear of my father. Every day, he would come home from work and if there was any single item out of place, he would explode. My sister and I would be sent to our room while he emotionally abused my mother in their room for who knows how long each evening. While there are plenty of areas in my life that have scars from these episodes, one area is housecleaning. After my mother thankfully left my dad, my sisters, my mom and I all experienced this period of freedom-without-accountability. I won't pretend to know exactly how it affected my mom, but for my sisters and me, housecleaning had died a long, torturous death and we danced on its grave with feathers in our caps. My mom sadly came home to a messy house for years and mostly cleaned it herself even after working her full time job because we simply couldn't be motivated to do the work. None of us ever really understood why we had such an innate aversion to cleaning, and the daily ritual of mom coming home, crying, and working mostly by herself while we looked on helplessly became the norm.
Several years back, I believe I learned the answer. We had been cleaning out of fear. Rather than being taught that cleaning up after yourself is a normal part of life that is not to be dreaded, nor taken lightly, we were taught that cleaning only had to do with keeping a monster at bay. Once the monster was removed, cleaning ceased. Please do not mistake me for one of those people you see on the TV shows that hoard all kinds of things. I've never been any type of pack rat. Also, I have a natural bent toward organization, so my messes are organized, and very rarely do I actually lose something. Most of my mess is clutter that just never got put in its place.
Now we've come to the part where I passed on this excessive cluttering to my children. Being emotionally removed from cleaning myself, I was not in a position to pass on the wisdom of its merits to my girls in their formative years. As a result, I have a 12.5 and 14 year old that sometimes do not even know what truly clean looks like. They think picking up a couple of items takes care of a whole room, even though the pair of shoes from last night are still in the middle of the living room floor. Now that I've healed some in this area and recognize when things are out of place, my anally retentive nature has brought me home plenty of times in a funk, yelling at them for something that realistically is my fault. It's my fault they don't know how to clean; I'm the one that was supposed to teach them how way-back-when.
One idea that I have been using for a little while now is lists. These lists are very detailed and the girls have to cross each and every item off to make sure they've completed the task they're working on. It works when they pay attention. When they don't, I just make sure they get everything done correctly when I get home, and I remind myself that this is my fault and the only person I should be yelling at is me. They get sad that we couldn't play, and I just repeat over and over that if it had been completed earlier in the day, we would have more time for visiting when I got home after work. I'm hoping the repetition will eventually permeate their skulls.
This new adventure gives me hope. It's non-confrontational, it teaches them to plan for future expenses, and it just might help them see cleaning as a positive thing, rather than a drudge. We do employ other ideas, and I work with them regularly, but this is for them to take some initiative on their own. We're going to use a 5-point system. For example, the entire bathroom perfectly cleaned is worth 5 points: the window, bath/shower, floor, toilet, and sink/cabinet/mirror. If only one of those items is done really well, they only get 1 point. I suggested a few specific tasks around the house that are outside of their normal arena, and we will also negotiate any tasks that they come up with themselves. I'm going to keep a spreadsheet on my phone updated with their "balances" so that I'll know if they have enough "saved up" to go with a friend on-the-fly when desired. We'll just see how it goes....
