Getting Stuff Done

So last night, a very over-tired and over-stimulated Miss E threw a tantrum at bedtime. A certain very-tired Daddy in the house, decided he had had enough of the tantrum and took down Miss E's beloved fort she had created under her bed. Now, there is a very long drawn-out version of this story and that certain over-tired Daddy has apologized but nevertheless, that is what happened in a nutshell.

This morning, a now kind of pissed off Miss E woke up, picked a fight with her brother and when banished to her room for a behavior improvement, emptied the entire contents of her room onto the floor. She essentially one-upped her father. Everything on the shelves, the bed, the dresser drawers and in the bins, went into a big heaping pile on the floor and there she sat perched on her desk looking at it all.

Well. I had stuff to do today to the tune of putting up some curtains and planting our flower pots so I said nothing about the room and we all got dressed and went to Lowe's. At this point I told Miss E that I had intended on getting some new shelves for her room (I really had) but that we couldn't put them in there right now because of the mess. So we picked out curtain rods and shelves and storage bins and flowers and lights and went home. While we were at the store Miss E kept saying to me "I'll never be able to clean up my room" to which I would mildly reply "oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out".

I knew in the end she would need some help but I wanted her to ask me instead of me offering it. We went home, I hung up a curtain rod (with minimal damage to the wall thank you very much) and started to plant some plants. I heard Miss E in her room picking some stuff up and finally she came out and asked me to help her. I told her I would help for 10 minutes and then I had other work to do. So I set the timer, we both went in and cleaned for 10 minutes and I left her to it. For the rest of the day, she worked away picking up her stuff. I put in a few 5 or 10 minute cleaning shifts but overall, she did it herself. At the end of the day her room looked pretty good and it felt like a success. She didn't yell or get angry, I didn't yell or get angry and she cleaned up the mess herself. I don't think she'll dump her room like that again now that she knows how much work it is to clean up! And the curtains and flowers look pretty good too if I do say so myself.