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My almost 15yo daughter is a very untidy & disorganised person. I am the complete opposite. She is the youngest of our 5 children by a few years.
I have given up on her having a tidy room all of the time, but at least a couple of times a week, I do ask her to clean it up & put away the washing I put just inside her door.
Her answer is usually, I will do it later, rarely does without being asked again, or, why do I have to tidy it, my room will only get messy again?
My reasons for wanting her room tidy, which I have conveyed to her:
1. Her father & I work hard to provide the things she has, I would like them to be respected & not thrown on the floor & trampled all over.
2. We are paying for the whole house, including her room, therefore I have the right to ask for it to be cleaned.
3. You can't go through like only doing what you want to.
We have tried monetary rewards & withholding of same, to no lasting avail. We have tried reasoning with her, but she simply is not a tidy person.
I have concluded I will never turn her into a tidy, organised person (she is my MIL all over), but ...
Is it wrong for us to insist that she keep her room in a reasonable state & will I be doing her lasting harm by insisting on this?
This is not really an issue I have had with the others as numbers 3b & 4g are like me, numbers 1b & 2b would clean their rooms when asked (& being boys did not have as much stuff as the girls)
Well, you only have some much emotional capital to spend fighting with a teen -- do you really want to spend it on this? It's going to make your relationship one of constant struggle and strife -- which means that when a real problem arises, you're not going to have a position of strength from which to address it. I'd just insist that she keeps the common areas clean of her stuff, and keeps her door closed. If she can't find her things, or if they get ruined from being on the floor, then she can replace them with her own money or do without, but otherwise, I wouldn't make WWIII out of this. Just my two cents.
1. Her father & I work hard to provide the things she has, I would like them to be respected & not thrown on the floor & trampled all over.
Then stop providing. Simple as that. If she needs something, the price of that something is a clean room. No need to argue about it.
2. We are paying for the whole house, including her room, therefore I have the right to ask for it to be cleaned.
To a degree, yes. But everyone has their private space and should be able to do with it as they wish to a degree. Dirty plates that attract mice and ants? No. Clothes on the floor. Not a big deal.
3. You can't go through like only doing what you want to.
True. But in reality she will eventually learn. Like when she realizes her favorite jeans that she wants to put on are at the bottom of the dirty laundry pile in her room. Or she steps on her phone because it was under a towel.
And don't do her laundry. At 15, who wants to go in her gross room and "find" dirty clothes?
My girls got ridiculous at the middle school age. I said I'd wash clothing that made it to the hamper in the laundry room. Theirs didn't. Eventually, I sent a note to their teacher about them possibly looking unkempt and explained my position... The girls got the message, and I've never washed their laundry since.
So, like lamaga said.... choose your battles wisely. On the other hand, you do not have to go out of your way to make it easier for her to be a slob. I think slobs SHOULD suffer the consequences of making it harder on themselves than it should be. People who do not put things away should have the headache all by themselves of finding or retrieving their own belongings.
I don't think you are doing her lasting harm, most of us were nagged by parents for one reason or another, and slobs know at some level that they are a slob. But it is fighting a losing battle.... better to make HER suffer the consequences.
If she is not sloppy around the rest of the house, then count your blessings. At 15 she needs a space of her own. Yes, it is your house, you pay, etc., etc. But she needs to assert or feel like she has control over part of her life. Give her that space.
I will try to lighten up on her. As she herself points out, she is not doing drugs & she is not out whoring (her words) & she is passing at school. I should be grateful the only issue is her messiness.
Thanks guys
lmao sorry but if it were my 15 yr old.. I guarantee you that child would be cleaning her room spotless! I guess I'm just meaner then the other parents here... but I wouldn't tolerate that. She may not be doing drugs or whoring.. but I sure as heck wouldn't have her be lazy either!
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I am not a parent, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Kids today are too spoiled and lazy. When I was 15, I was doing laundry and ironing for SIX people. If my room was not kept clean, I would receive a tongue lashing.
Although my parents were abusive, they instilled a work ethic and cleanliness in me that I will always be grateful for. I don't advocate being too strict, but I do think that parents need to stop being so indulgent. Fifteen is more than old enough to expect a child to keep their room clean.
Our children have all been raised with the 'You don't work, you don't eat' mentality. The older ones do joke around now that when they left home, the first thing they did was buy a hamburger without having to spend all day cleaning the yard.
We were a lot stricter with the older ones, I think we have just lost some of the fight with the youngest.
I will never understand why parents choose to fight with their kids about their rooms. It makes no sense to me. If you've taught them how to clean, then they KNOW it's messy. It's their room, their stuff - why pick that battle?
And why do we suddenly think our kids owe us for the roof over their heads when they reach a certain age? Do we look at our infants and think about everything they owe us? No. So why do our teens owe us? If we've done our job as a parent, they know what we do for them. Reminding them at every turn is guaranteed to make them resent what we've done for them, not appreciate it.
The trick is to get them to WANT to keep their rooms clean, if you can. You can just tell them matter of factly that they can't have guests when their room is messy. It doesn't have to be a battle. And if they choose to not have guests then that's fine. Let them have their messy room. Just make sure they know it's THEIR choice.
Giving kids choices rather than ultimatums goes a long way towards building mutual respect.
I'm sorry, but it's all in the discipline! Like their dad, my two college aged sons like their rooms cleaned and organized. They were brought up to clean them, and not properly doing so got them either fastly grounded or financially unrewarded. They learned extremely quickly.
Conversely, STBXW's kids are much like the ones described earlier in this post, only far worse. She or her kids dad obviously didn't believe in discipline and their kids would absolutely tear their rooms up and the rest of the house to hell and back. They would not discipline their kids, still rewarded them with allowances, and if they lost something, they would simply just go out and buy them newer items. Her kids were spoiled rotten and were so generally unclean that their filth would absolutely make a buzzard puke! STBXW would just deal with it by simply pulling their door shut on it!
And today, as young adults, they're even far worse!
I would greatly think that cleanliness and tidiness definitely starts with parental "discipline!"
to get mine to clean her room recently, i had to take away her her laptop, take away her ds, take away her kindle, then i took away her tv, then i grounded her to the house and family (no friends), restricted her cellphone, limited her to only family activities, made her stay home from girl scouts, came close to pulling her out of her martial arts but didnt, threatened to put all her stuff in trash bags or have a flea market with it.
and finally... when i told her i would put a lock on her door and lock her out of her own room and make her sleep in the hallway (wife was shocked when i said this) she whined i couldnt like a spoiled brat leftwinger socialists but finally cleaned it. She knew at that point i had finally had it, and come hell or highwater i would take her bedroom completly away.
i hate being the disciplinarian and my wifes always jumps in because she thinks "im too hard on the kids" but i had about had it with the entire thing at that point.
The room was finally cleaned a few days ago.
to get mine to clean her room recently, i had to take away her her laptop, take away her ds, take away her kindle, then i took away her tv, then i grounded her to the house and family (no friends), restricted her cellphone, limited her to only family activities, made her stay home from girl scouts, came close to pulling her out of her martial arts but didnt, threatened to put all her stuff in trash bags or have a flea market with it.
and finally... when i told her i would put a lock on her door and lock her out of her own room and make her sleep in the hallway (wife was shocked when i said this) she whined i couldnt like a spoiled brat leftwinger socialists but finally cleaned it. She knew at that point i had finally had it, and come hell or highwater i would take her bedroom completly away.
i hate being the disciplinarian and my wifes always jumps in because she thinks "im too hard on the kids" but i had about had it with the entire thing at that point.
The room was finally cleaned a few days ago.
Holy crap, seriously?? To me, this is bordering on child abuse. Treating anyone, your child or not, with this much disrespect is horrible
Why the heck is it so important that she have a clean room? If it's that important to you, then YOU should clean it. You could have cleaned it ten times over with the energy you expended doing what you did to her.
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Messy daughter- Leave it or fight? 
