Room Cleaning

So Bridget woke up on Thursday morning really upset. I sat on her bed to talk with her. She was reluctant at first to tell me what was going on. She said it was embarrassing. Finally she told me what was going on. She had had a dream and in her dream her room was painted blue (not magenta and pink like it is now) and it was really clean and she had her own TV and there was money and credit cards and a new wallet on her bed. Then she woke up to real life (and her usually messy room) and she said she felt "ashamed". I told her I would help her clean her room but I couldn't help her with credit cards and a TV. I generally tried to cheer her up a bit. The kids were going to my mom's for the day to hang out while I did a 50 mile bike ride with a friend (and her friends). I distracted her and got the kids off for the day. When the kids got home I found out they had watched PG-13 rated Hancock. Joey said "I said it would be OK because we have watched other PG-13 movies like Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean and Ironman". Hmmm that's 11 year old logic. Anyway when it was bedtime Bridget wasn't going to sleep and Joe was upstairs talking with her trying to get her to calm down and go to bed. I figured she was having "bad thoughts" after watching Hancock. It turns out she was still disturbed about this mythical clean room with amenities. Again we distracted her (books this time) and she went to sleep. Fast forward to today, Labor Day. We didn't have any plans so I told her we would get going on the room in the morning. I told her we would take before and after pictures and we could post them on Facebook for everyone to see. Well when it came time to take the pictures she was like a Sean Penn trying to take out the paparazzi! She was jumping up grabbing my camera wielding hand and making every shot blurry. She was not eager to clean her room and even less eager to document it. So I wasn't angry about her room (as is frequently the case) and I wanted to make it fun so I came up with a reward. I told her that if we got her room cleaned (all the way) that I would take her to Value Village and buy her a new wallet (to replace her cute, but too childish plastic Hello Kitty wallet). It helped that Value Village is having a 50% off everything sale today! So we managed to say goodbye to lots of stuff, unfortunately it was mostly paper scraps and broken toys but it is amazing how much cleaner a room is without those things. This will be interesting to see how long the clean room lasts as I will have it documented. So here are the before and after photos. There is only one "before" picture due to her paparazzi stopping tactics. She also got a sweet new wallet, although they had NOTHING at VV and we had to pay retail (well retail less 54% off sale plus 15% off coupon) at Fred Meyer.