And I mean it!!

When Rick and I were first discussing combining our households and building someplace big enough to put everyone, I explained the 'upstairs kids rooms' philosophy of home design. That is, if the kids' rooms are upstairs, and are not exactly at their Brady Bunch best as far as cleanliness goes, no one has to know. In other words, out of sight, out of mind. Hey, it was good enough for my mom, so it's good enough for me.
Mom did get fed up with our mess on occasion and give us a time frame in which to rectify the problem. We'd go up with the best of intentions. Then we'd find a stack of Archie comics and a bar of the world's finest chocolate left over from the band booster fund raiser and, well, get distracted. Hours later, we'd hear her coming up the stairs (they were old, wooden stairs, so we'd always hear her) and then scramble to get things set to right to avoid the grounding or lickin' or whatever the threatened punishment du jour was.

Em's room has been quite neglected lately. We've been pretty busy so I've cut her a little slack. But I did have one of those "I've turned in to my mother" moments this afternoon when she called to see if a couple of her friends could spend the night.
"Get that room clean first", I told her, "Or I'm going to take pictures of it and post them on the blog!!"