Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Everywhere....

Now that you have that annoying song stuck in your head.......I often assign tasks to the kids., pick up all the shoes, take the toys back upstairs, get all your dirty clothes to the laundry room, and so on. So today, I asked the boys to get the downstairs picked up. No one moved. I asked again, no one moved. So I started to assign "jobs" as they call it. Then, I had a brilliant idea (they hate it when this happens:) I assigned them each an area of the house to get picked up. Chase got the office (mine, not Tony's...just to clarify) and the steps, Ethan got the downstairs and Blake the upstairs. Chase wasn't in there 2 minutes and he comes to tell me, "mom, it really isn't my responsibility to clean up your office you know." Really? Well, it is my responsibility to make sure you know how to clean up so your wife...he interupts me, "you mean Lola?"....yes Chase, whoever you marry...."well, Lola dosen't even care about cleaning up" .....well son, I do and she will so you are going to be responsible for cleaning the office (picking up crayons, coloring books, books, shoes, trash, toys, etc) and making sure there isn't anything on the stairs. He leaves and I notice Ethan isn't down here picking up. So I call him down. He said he is through picking up. Really? I still see toys, shoes, plates on the table..."oh, that's not mine those are Dad's shoes and Chasey was playing with those blocks, and.." Wait one minute, you are responsible for the downstairs, so anything down here is your responsibilty. He gets to picking up the others' messes. I go upstairs to check on Blake and find that the stiars are littered with dirty clothes, towels, etc and I call for Chase to get the stairs cleaned up. "But mom, I already did clean off the stairs." Well, there is more stuff on them. "Hey guys, who threw all this stuff on the stairs??" Of course he gets no answer so he gets to picking up all the dirty laundry and when he comes back there are more toys on the steps. He was livid. Blake is cleaning the upstiars and tossing down dirty laundry and Ethan is cleaning up the downstairs and putting toys and shoes on the stairs to go up. Finally Chase yells "HEY EVERYONE.....THE STAIRS ARE OFF LIMITS!!! NO ONE PUT ANYTHING ON THE STEPS ANYMORE!" I think we may be onto something here folks.........