Washing away the attitude

Colin has a terrible habit of throwing his clothes all over his room when he takes them off. When it is time for me to do laundry I wind up on a treasure hunt looking for it all. I've stopped doing that and started washing only what he gets relatively close to the laundry basket in his room. When he discovers he has to wait an extra week for his favorite shorts or shirt because he didn't get them in the basket, maybe he'll learn.

I was nice one night and I warned him I was going to do laundry in the morning and to clean up his clothes and get them all to the basket, as well as turned right side out that evening. He got about half his clothes in the basket and then came out of his room to go back to his movie in the living room. Which is when I reminded him about the turning everything right side out part again. He got very annoyed with me and started yelling at me that wasn't his job it was mine. Oooooooh buddy! In no time flat his dad and myself informed him that it was NOT my job to do his laundry, but something I do as a kindness to him. A generous offer on my behalf that he had just seen the last of for a while. He was told he would be gathering, sorting, washing, drying and folding his own laundry until further notice.

Each day since then I've asked him if he would like to do his laundry yet and he continues to tell me no, it's my job and he's not doing it. I don't push the issue and figure soon enough he'll run out of clothes and when he has to send his friends away because he has nothing proper to wear outside, well so be it! He's been coming out in PJs the last couple night that are a good size too small and I haven't seen him wear in ages. Guess who decided to do his laundry today. Now he knows it's not as easy as it looks, He's still going to be doing it for a while, hopefully he gets the point. Until then, I've got a lot less laundry to fold. Yippee!