cleaning intervention

I have a serious issue in my house and am calling for an intervention. My children are demonstrating an incapability for cleaning up after themselves. This picture was taken a few minutes ago in our playroom.   The playroom that has been the scene of toy angst over the last 6 weeks. What has been missing?

Children cleaning up.

It started out as a project… Let’s organize the Legos by color! {Take it from me.   You NEVER, EVER, EVER should utter those words out loud.   Never.   Really.   I will come over to your house and save you from yourself.} I moved 3 sets of wooden toy boxes into the playroom closet.   The 18 colorful boxes were each filled with a single color of Legos – gray, white, yellow, red, brown, beige, black, orange, green, more gray, more black, more white, minifigures, wheels and miscellaneous. 7 days into sorting.   Serious sorting.   It occurred to me that we were never going to get to the end of this project. Alive. Let’s figure out a more sane system of sorting for these Legos so we can have something other than Lego sorting in our life! NO!   We WANT the Legos sorted by color! Yep, that was the plea of my three children.   They agreed to take over the responsibility of the sorting. The sorting that stopped on that day. I then introduced the concept of ANY kind of Lego clean up. Just get those Legos off the floor so I can vacuum! It didn’t happen. No more Lego purchases until the playroom is cleaned up! Nothing happened except the boys started collecting Hex Bugs. No more toy purchases until the playroom is cleaned up! Nothing. No more allowance of any kind until the playroom is cleaned up! Nothing. No more savings {all savings of spending money was wiped clean} and no allowance reinstatement until the playroom is cleaned up! Nothing. I am considering drastic action because here are a few other pictures I took as well… Homeless stuffed animals. Unmade beds. Unhung clothes. Enough! Tell me how to solve this problem, oh internet friends… I need your advice! Helping me will automatically enter you to win one of two prizes:

• First Prize: House Cleaner for a day plus $100 in product from GreatCleaners.com.
• Second Prize: A Copy of the Book Over 100 Helpful Household Hints

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