I’m tidy person.  Not crazy, Marie Barone, sanitize within an inch of your life clean, but tidy.  Everything has its place.  Floors are vacuumed and mopped, surfaces are dusted, and bathrooms are cleaned regularly.

I knew that with the addition of kids, there’d be additional mess.  Normal, manageable, mess.  N had his messes, but they were reasonable and easy for HIM to clean up.

Then came M and L.  My house has never been the same.

Its as though they have no concept or interest in cleanliness whatsoever.  Things that are normally NOT mess-inducing BECOME messes.  Here’s a few examples:

• Yesterday, I spent a good half hour scrubbing the sink free of toothpaste.  Toothpaste!  I’ve never scrubbed a bathroom so hard in my life.
• Saturday, I vacuumed.  Literally an hour later, I found Lego bits and paper scraps ground into the carpet.
• Stickers are banned.  ‘Nuff said.
• One day, M thought it’d be a good idea to play catch with a bottle of nail polish.  That had no lid.  Nail polish everywhere – walls, carpet, etc.
• Today, L’s sheets were covered with crayon bits, pieces of paper, and god only knows what else.  So I threw them in the wash.  An hour later, I bring them back into his room – only to discover that now, the MATTRESS is covered in crayon bits, legos and paper.  An HOUR later!

And no amount of discipline, reminders or rewards seems to fix this.  Unless I’m on top of them every second, they’re creating a mess and leaving it behind.

Its gotten so bad that we removed L’s bed frame and box spring so that he AT LEAST couldn’t shove stuff under his bed (you don’t want to know…).  And when I recently bought beds for the kids (arriving soon) I made sure to buy beds that had no gap between the frame and the floor (captain’s beds).

Is this normal for kids who’ve been in the system?  Probably.  Maybe it has something to do with the homelessness they experienced.  But why isn’t it getting any better?  M’s made some definite improvements, but L hasn’t.  It doesn’t help that he’s obsessed with teeny tiny things – things which add to the messiness.

It makes me soooo crazy.  I wish I could just let it go, but you know, I’M the one paying for carpet cleaning, or chasing after ants, or bothered by the smell.

It will get better, won’t it?