I'm very curious how others handle these situations as I find myself very confused. Dd and ds are obviously a lot more independent in doing things for themselves than when they were younger, but I am finding it harder in terms of the house and the shape it it in! It was obvious what they were doing when they were younger, and I would either know they could clean it up and have that expectation, clean it up with them, or take care of it--the important difference is I would have the cleaning up part happen pretty soon after whatever they did so things did not build up.
So frequently now when I go to do things, I find lots of things that need to be done, due to something the kids have done. For example, I go to take a shower, and there is conditioner spilled all over the floor. In other parts of the house, there is jelly on the floor, there are wet towels left somewhere, the cheese has been left open (and is now bad), the microwave is a mess, there are scraps of paper all around the house (from projects they do) along with whatever other materials they used. Dd has left out everything she used to polish her nails and there is nailpolish on something there shouldn't be. I go to start the dishwasher and there are big chunks of food on the bottom that take a while to clean. There are more, but I can't think of them now.
I have been having the kids come back and take care of what they haven't done..but I don't know if maybe I should be letting this stuff go or handling this differently. I don't remember worrying about this stuff when I was a teen. I had a stay at home mom, and I suspect she cleaned up after me, although not sure. It would literally take hours just to take care of these things as they pile up when I don't notice them, and the problem is I only notice them when I notice them. We all have other things we need to do on weekends, so its difficult to add all of this to the mix. OTOH, I do feel that it is normal for teens to be forgetful, and I don't want to have unrealistic expectations.
How do you handle this? Do you just clean it all up, have some kind of structure where the tween/teen cleans up. Help!