Lion in Winter

Now that I think of it, I think my son has been practicing this ancient British art in his room

I don't know how he does it. When do they grow out of that stage?

SultanOfSwing

Food, or just general crap? Ours is months away from 18 and he's still at it. Food, food wrappers, empty cans, at one point every single mother****ing plastic cup we owned. You name it, it ends up in the black hole that is his room. We've been in that house 7 years and that room has been clean precisely two times. The day we moved in, and one time a few years ago when my wife had the wonderful idea of ruining a Friday by making us all draw locations to tidy out of a hat and I got the bedrooms.

I don't know where it comes from. My room wasn't exactly clean but it was all just notes from school or books/CD boxes or something like that, in vaguely neatly stacked piles. Never perishables or food wrappers - I knew how to use a ****ing dustbin

Lion in Winter

Everything. The lot. It's all in there. The stuff that isn't in his bathroom anyway. Glad I'm not sharing that any more

I make him clean it up relatively regularly, but he makes a half-assed job of it.

SultanOfSwing

They do it half-assed thinking we won't ask them to do it again. Don't give in to that.

I have offered to clean it so many times. I'm at the point now where I'm going to make him sit in the living room sucking his thumb while I just get it done. I bet I can do in two hours what it's taken him seven bloody years to do.

I do still have to use the 'shared' bathroom on occasion. I hope for your sake that your son at least knows what that little metal handle on the side of the bog is for.

Jerseygirl

The only problem I had with my daughter was the state of her rooms. Eventually my wise husband said 'in a couple of years she will be off to college. Do you want her to look back on happy times or constant arguments about her room?'

From then on I kept her door closed. She brought her laundry downstairs and I left clean laundry outside her door. No more arguments.


Apologies for going off topic Guindalf.

Pulaski

Little Miss P seems to be on the same path. You have given me absolutely no cause for hope.

mrken30

Don't they do summer camps on how to clean up your bedroom?

Pulaski

I don't think little Miss P's summer camp has time between teaching her how to adopt a surly attitude, forget her table manners, complain about nutritious foods she has eaten for years, acquire poor dress sense, and generally become a teenager years ahead of schedule.

SultanOfSwing

**** that, it's my house. If he wants to treat it like that he can pay rent or move out. Pretty simple, really.

Where children are involved, there is no hope. Except the hope that you'll live long enough to see them move out.

mrken30

My kid now has a shed outside that he spends time in more than the house. Is this called child abuse?

SultanOfSwing

No, it sounds like a good arrangement actually.

Pulaski

That depends on what is going on in the shed!

mrken30

He seems to be interested in keeping wild mice and bugs at the moment. Maybe his interests will change as he gets older. Sometimes he just goes there to chill out.

Rete

His first man cave.

Mallory

Both my husband and I are very clean and tidy. Our son and daughter were both pigs, Like JG I just closed the doors. Not worth fighting about. Daughter was unbelievably messy, and son was like SOS's son.

I had new furniture delivered for the LR once. When the delivery men picked up the old sofa, there was a half eaten pizza underneath it!

I shudder to think back on those days!