Totally Frustrated with Pig Pen | ADHD Information

We use the marble system by ogram (top post) for chores and these include pick up the living room/keep it picked up (some rooms are a higher level of clean than others). Friends cannot come over if the living room is not picked up. We aslo had to pick it up and place the stuff in a trash pile  for the kids (but have not actually had to throw anything away. By having order in this room, the kitchen and our room, my husband and I can live with the rest of the clutter (as there are some areas of order).

This is my 2nd posting today.  My house is a complete mess.  Everywhere I turn is a breadcrumb trail (not literally) of my ADHD son's whereabouts. Cabinets left open, spills, clothing.  You would think he had no training or discipline at all.  I am on him constantly and every request or reminder is now met with a sigh of exasperation and often oppositional behavior. 

I feel like I'm a stranger in my own home.  He says I'm too compulsive and want everything to have order.  (May be true) But the lack of order totally stresses me out.  His room looks like a tsumani hit it.  I've spent hundreds on buckets and shelving for organization only for it not to be used.  I've agreed to close the door and let him live in his mess ... but I can't have my entire house in disarray!

What to do!!!

 

Use the "first this, then that" rule. First pick up the living room, then you watch TV. Etc.

I agree wi th Vickie, we use a reward system and a list for him to pick everything up, do all his chore, and get ready in the morning. It works pretty good here.

I also use the marble system to reward for picking stuff up, but my son still always needs to be reminded.  It drives me nuts because the more stressed I am, the more the mess irritates me.  I'll usually have both the kids pick up whatever they've left around the house while I'm making dinner- they know that if there's anything left out they're not going to see it again for a while. 

We try to do a room clean up once a week now- I used to just close the door and forget about it (and I still do except on saturday morning) but then we started to have problems because he was throwing his dirty laundry behind his bed and it never made it to the washer.  

In order to make cleaning his room easier we took about 90% of his "stuff" out.  My MIL buys the kids tons of toys and things they don't even use, so we got rid of everything except his legos, star wars figures and cd player.  He doesn't miss any of it and he is actually capable of dealing with the amount of stuff that's in there now.

Jaderock we did the same thing TOO MUCH JUNK! Since we limited the amount of toys and junk in the room he has been able to keep it clean on his own easier. I also cleaned it once and shower him what clean meant. now he knows what I expect, and is pretty good about it.Good point about thinning out the "stuff". The girls had too much stuff so I started giving them for each trash can size bag of toys they gave to goodwill. It helped them give up stuff they no longer played with.

Kids make messes.  Teens love to live in junk piles.  If you can tolerate it- shut the door. .. As long as nothing is crawling or slithering out, that is:)

   That said, I had come to the end of my rope.  I have a soon to be 14 yr old aspie with adHHHd.  I have finally gotten where I tell him that he has to have ,say... his toys picked up from the floor.  He has a set time to do it.  If it isn't done by the next morning, the rule is anything I find on his floor belongs to me.  I go in with a garbage bag and load up.  It is up to me whether or not to allow him to earn something back or to toss it out.  It took a while for him to realize that I meant business.  Once he missed a few special cards and realized that they went out with the trash....he now gets that floor picked up.  Now, if only he would hang up his clothes and keep his drawers neat...sigh.... I know...this, too, shall pass.  I have already raised one generation of teens........

Have you read Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley?  It is a really good book about cleaning.  my sister laughs at me because i needed a book to help me clean, but it breaks down cleaning, and organizing into small daily tasks.  i have my list and my dd has her list of daily things to do (mondays she cleans her book shelf, tuesday her closet toys, wed her bathroom counter, thurs under her bed, fri her play kitchen, you get the idea.)  No chore takes more then 10-15 minutes.   i am not going for perfection, just not chaos.  you can buy them used on amazon, i have lent it to dozens of friends and everyone finds something in it to help. i hope you find something that works.