The One With the #MeanMom

I am pretty much almost always a Mean Mom.

* I make my kids do chores.  - What else do you have kids for if not to do the household chores that you hate?

* I make them read for at least 20 mins every night, more if they don't have homework.  - hey, reading is good for you!!

* I make them still ride in various forms of car seats/ boosters despite the fact that they are 7-11 yrs old. If the seatbelt doesn't fit right then you sit in a booster, and if you are still scrawny enough to fit in a 5pt harness then by golly you'll be there til you outgrow it. I don't care if you will be 15 by then! lol!

* I believe in grounding.  If you break the rules which you clearly know because they have been the same rules forever, then I am going to ground you from whatever you love most.  For the oldest (at home) , he gets grounded from being in his room except for actually sleeping b/c as a teenage boy he virtually lives in that room. The others get grounded from anything that requires batteries or being plugged in.  Hit 'em where it hurts!  That's my motto.


So I thought it might be kinda fun to have Mean Mom Mondays where I can talk about all the ways my kids have deemed me a mean mom.  I happen to have a prime example.

Laundry is a chore for the kids. They are responsible for bringing their own laundry to the laundry room in a timely manner.  There is nothing I hate more than hearing "I don't have any pants" when they are supposed to be getting dressed for school!!  It burns me!

I wash the clothes,  I dry the clothes... Heck I even lay out any shirts nicely so they don't get wrinkled from sitting in the dryer or basket. But they must bring their dirty clothes to the laundry room in order for them to get washed. I am not chasing them down.  In fact the only part of laundry that they actually do it gather it, fold it & put it away. Not too hard right?

Well I have been getting pretty sick and tired of these kids being slobs. They either a)don't put everything away and just throw it in their closet  *ahem. Fishing Pole * or b) they try something on, get told to change b/c it's not weather appropriate and toss said clean clothing item on the floor/bed/chair - so when they are gathering their dirty clothes they get all this clean crap -because by now, who knows what's clean and what's dirty?- and into the laundry it goes.

It infuriates me to be sitting there (yes, I sit on the floor to sort laundry... you try doing laundry for 7 people and see if you don't sit to go thru the mounds) sorting laundry only to come across pairs of matched (clean) socks or a clean shirt that is STILL FOLDED.  It kills me.  So I finally got sick of yelling b/c let's face it, it doesn't change.  I now charge per clean clothing item that I find. Said offender has to give 5 mins of foot rubbing per clean item I find.   This is a newly instituted rule in the house and Southern Darlin' just happened to be the first to pay it's price.

Hers was a shirt which she had on for 5 mins and was told to change.  Now she tried to blame Spoiled Princess b/c she gathered the laundry but I explained that if she had put the shirt away when she changed, it wouldn't have been laying on the floor/bed/chair and Spoiled Princess wouldn't have thought it was dirty.

Mom - 1 Southern Darlin - 0 

There was huffing and eye rolling.  We are in the midst of the tween years and she's trying out her attitude.  Of course attitude is something else I don't put up with so she got the joy of folding 3 baskets of laundry alone without her siblings help.   Yep, Mean Mom status reaffirmed!

Are you a mean mom too?