#MeanMom tackles laziness

Another installment of Mean Mom Mondays !

Okay this one I need some help with.  I have not figured out the right punishment to fit the crime.

The Crime - Laziness


We all succumb to laziness from time to time; but my children seem to grab onto it, hold it tight, and wallow in it.  Today I have a prime example for you !   Lucky you !!

This is our main bathroom. Mind you, we have 4.  One downstairs that is primarily Attitude King's and I don't go down there if I don't have to.  If you have a teenaged boy, you understand!  One is upstairs which is mainly what the girls use for getting ready in the mornings or at bedtime.  One is my master bathroom which NO ONE but me is allowed to use- okay, I let Daddy Chaos use it, but under protest!  Lastly we have this bathroom (this is obviously not the entire bathroom but it's what counts for my point- which I will come to eventually) which is located just off the living room. This is the bathroom that sees the most traffic from all the kids. 

Now I would like to point out my attempts to deter laziness.  Do you see the cute toilet paper holder sitting there in the corner?   Now do you notice that it is completely full of toilet paper?   Slowly track your eyes to the left.  BOOM! There it is!  The empty toilet paper roll!!  WHY??

All except the smallest boys can sit on that toilet, use the end of the toilet paper , r e a c h over and grab a fresh roll to put on - all without getting up. So WHY is it empty?

Nothing peeves my pickle more than this type of laziness.   Now I admit I am a little neurotic on how the toilet paper goes onto the roll and I have been known to yell when it's on wrong.

The point here is - everyone knows the appropriate way to put toilet paper on the roll.  There have been drills, there have been tests.  It is knowledge that is ingrained into their tiny brains.

And they all know WHY we put the toilet paper on the correct way :

So we can't even use that as an excuse.   And so I must concede that it is just pure laziness on the part of my children that leaves me with an empty toilet paper roll  in this situation.  Now, of course, I changed it and put a full roll on ... but I'm half tempted to change it back before they get home just to see exactly how long it will take one of them to change it.

I'm pretty sure I need this little reminder and maybe , just maybe it will help?

What do you do to cure chronic laziness in your kids?

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?