Unfuck Your Habitat

wings-unfurling:

I am seriously about to lose my mind.  I can try and try and try to follow UFYH’s 20/10 and 45/15’s and unfuck your mornings and challenges and everything till I’m blue in the face but it doesn’t do a god damned bit of good because of my daughter!  She’s 13 and gods can you tell.  I’ll clean and everything will be sparkly and beautiful and calms me down (because living in a mess triggers my depression badly).

Then she comes through like a hurricane and makes it look like I didn’t do a single damn thing to my home.  When we first did UFYH together to make this place livable, she was all over it.  But once it was clean it was like she stopped caring and thought it would magically stay that way.

 My desk looks like I never did anything to it because she piles my stuff there and then I don’t know what’s what.  My table gets all her graded papers and pencils and stuff she isn’t using tossed all over it, which buries it in about five minutes.  Blankets on the end of the couch that have been folded and are ready for myself or guests to easily grab and use are tossed onto the floor and walked all over because she wants the WHOLE couch to lounge on.  My comfy chair is home to her sweatshirts and coats.  The kitchen counter is where she piles trash, even though the trash can is directly below where she’s standing when she uses the counter.  Clean dishes get mixed into the few dirty ones because she refuses to learn where I put things in the cabinets.

I’ve tried piling all her stuff on her bed for her to deal with, but then she shoves it all on the floor to sleep and never picks it up.  I’ve tried talking to her, bribing her, punishing her, yelling at her… If you name it, I’ve probably tried it.  It’s like she thinks she has to help with the original cleaning and then I’ll just spend my life following her around and picking up after her and staightening everything back up again.  Her excuses are always - ALWAYS - either “it’s not my mess”, “I don’t know where stuff goes” or “I don’t know how to do things like you do”.  Which are all a load of bullshit.

She KNOWS how to clean.  She KNOWS where stuff goes.  She KNOWS if we just pick up stuff as we go along, putting a few things away every time we leave the room, it won’t be as much work.  But she doesn’t do it.  I’ve heard her tell her friends she doesn’t do it because it’s boring.  Well yes, cleaning IS boring!  But it still needs done.

I’m tired of crying every day because while she’s at school I get the place nice again and she ruins it every night and just doesn’t give a damn how doing that and her behavior make me feel.

Help me, fellow unfuckers.  How can I keep my home clean and get my kid to do her share so I’m not worn out from endless 20/10s and 45/15s?  We’re talking about a kid who can see an overflowing garbage can and tell me with a straight face it’s not a big deal.  And I can’t do this anymore.  I’m tired, I’m in pain and I’m just overwhelmed.

[Edited to remove offensive and potentially triggering material.] So, people with kids, especially teenagers, what do you suggest?

ETA: please reblog to answer, rather than flooding my askbox.