10 Hours

I have been begging the kids to clean up the playroom for 10 days.

"No dessert until the playroom is clean!"

"No friends over until the playroom is clean!"

"Flu shots everyday until the playroom is clean!"

Then the last three days have been more like this:
"I just need to vacuum! Throw everything behind the couch so I can vacuum the floor!"

Today, with my trusty husband backup, I put my foot down...right on a piece of popcorn.
"Don't leave this playroom until everything is put away!!!"

(There may have been some screaming involved.)

(From most parties involved.)

So they started this morning at 8:30. Around 11:45, they decided the best course of action was to dump all of the toys out of the totes onto the floor. At 2 pm I gave them a 20 minute lunch break, then back to "work." At 6 pm, hubby and I went down with big, black garbage bags and sent all the kids to their rooms. (An idea he'd suggested at 1 pm.) By 6:20 pm, every toy was picked up and the floor was vacuumed and the playroom door was locked.

Then we sent them outside to pick up the outside toys so Hubby could mow the grass. Each one of them (separately) came back in to tell me that I hadn't taken away all of their toys: "We still have toys outside!"

We didn't, however, tell them that their toys did not actually go in the garbage. But we sure did let them assume.