My craft room has once again become cluttered and messy – I swear that the craft supplies have a big party every night and scatter themselves about randomly. So the craft room is the “Room of Doom” at the moment.
What’s the “Room of Doom” you ask?
Well, I made a nice poster to hang on the messiest room in the house:
It is amazing how well this works. If I hang it on the entrance to a messy room, the kids obey the sign and pick something up when they go in. I don’t have to nag them to pick up, they both know what the sign means. Even better, if I hang it on the door to one of the kids’ bedrooms, everybody picks up when they go in. (This has a really nice side benefit – both girls have offered to help the other clean her room when it’s declared the “Room of Doom” and followed through.)
I’ve been using the “Room of Doom” sign and changing it’s location as needed for the past couple of months, and it still works. Is my house still messy? Of course! But it’s slowly getting better, because we’ve all gotten into better tidying up habits as a family.
Of course, declaring my craft room as the “Room of Doom” really just means that I’m intending to pick it up myself. Everybody else in the house knows better than to go in there, even when it’s clean. But what can I say? The sign works on me, too!
