The Chaos That Ensued

The plans I had in mind for Saturday were to work with my children to get their rooms cleaned and organized from the Christmas holidays and enjoy the rest of Saturday just being lazy or playing games. That was NOT at ALL how it went! Here are the before shots of their rooms, which let me add had been this way since Christmas with no turn around in site and I couldn't take it another day.

This is just the most shameful mess I have ever allowed anyone outside of my house to see. Now I know most if not all kids dislike cleaning of any kind and I am not so old that I do not remember that feeling. However, I have told my children repeatedly that we live here so we have to take care it. What ensued when I "cracked the whip" as one of my Facebook Fans said was like a horror movie. My children went into fits that contained screaming, crying, convulsing, kicking, stomping, whining, mumbling in a foreign language (it was like kidese or something), threatening, and many other evil things. I kept waiting on the levitation and the head spinning to occur but thankfully it didn't. I pulled together and prayed to God for guidance because I wanted my children to learn that cleaning wasn't a chore, but a part of life and could be enjoyed if we made it routine. I just wasn't sure how it was going to happen. Now after several hours of fighting and a whole lot of me helping all 3 children clean up and organize their rooms, it was done.

Finished results were fantastic and I felt so much better! It was definitely worth it but honestly I did not want to have to spend another Saturday fighting these children just to clean a room. What was I going to do? Well I just kept cleaning and you know what happened this beautiful Monday morning when I got up. My daughter had gotten up and made her bed!! I was astonished and so proud...she did it without me asking. I think I know...I have gotten up every day since Friday and made my bed, gotten dressed, started laundry, made my coffee, and went to work on my FlyLady Flight Plan. Now if you haven't heard of FlyLady please use the clickable link and check it out. However, I have had a bad habit of not being consistent in my cleaning since I went back to work. Not only have I taught myself how to be more consistent but being more consistent has also started to instill a new habit in my children. "Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6