It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad House

Oooh, Josie is sooooooo mad at me!

While she was at camp today, I vaccumed the house, including her room. For the second time in as many attempts, the vacuum clogged to the point where I had to bring the hose downstairs and suck it out with the little shop vac we have in the basement due to the incredible amount of $hit on her floor. I was PISSED, and decided that it was high time to do what I've been threatening to do for a few weeks now, but haven't had the time for.

I threw out everything on her floor.

I threw out paper, plastic boxes with junk and/or scarves inside, random socks, and a wooden puzzle figurine. I dumped all the bowls and cups that she's been hoarding in her room on her bed. All the dirty, doggy-haired clothes I found were thrown on there, too.

I was on a roll.

I swept her desktop workspace clean, too. Away went piles of junk, beads, embroidery floss, and doo-dads. Anything even remotely tidy stayed. Everything else is gone.

Then I moved on to her trash. Lest you think I'm exaggerating about the grossness of her room, let me tell you that her trash was FULL, and on the bottom was a pullup from when my niece spent the night here in. JUNE.

Finally went the overflowing recycle bin. This may not sound like much, but Miss Thing is notorious for hiding things in there. Her (non-recycleable) binder for school was in there under a stack papers, along with a bunch of drawings that I'm pretty sure she was intending to keep.

By the end, I had three kitchen bags full of trash, plus an entire paper bin of recycling.

I told her that anything that's missing that she needs, for instance a binder for school, will have to be replaced with her own money, because I am not responsible for things that she deemed to be trash.

This is not the first time I've done this, but it's been a long time. I think she was four or five the last time; she used to hide huge piles of stuff in gift bags in her closet and then deem her room 'clean'. She lost some clothes, my little ponies, and barbies that way when she didn't think I would really throw the bags away if they continued to be catch-alls.

So, she's currently crawling under her bed, getting the nasty crap I wasn't going to go after., and I'm unpopular. But, my vacuum will not clog up the next time I go in there, by god! If this doesn't send the proper message, the next time, I'm going to dump the trash in the middle of the room so it can mix with the rest of the floor garbage, and she'll have to deal with it *all* herself immediately.

Bwah ha ha ha ha!