L., answer to yourself first and the others second. You have to figure out what is enough or good enough on your standards. What are YOU OK with about the house? If you middle child is acting like he's not getting enough, it might be he looking at you and you acting like you are not getting enough. Start thinking about yourself and making yourself happy and satisfy. Its hard for so many woman to do. Its easier to wallow in self pity. But don't judge yourself against your mil, she lived and raised her kids in different times. You need to do whatever it takes to make you proud of what you've accomplished. Then that will make you more happy.
But on the note of keeping the house clean. I'm not great at it either and it does make me feel good that there are other mothers that are willing to admit that they too do not keep a clean house. For me, what helps is that I have tubs and attempted to lable them. It's the hardest when I look at something and have no clue where it should go. That's usually when things tend to stay where they are for an obsenly long period of time. But if there's a home for a piece of paper, toy, tool, clothing, art supply, then its easy for me to speed clean. That is of course when I get motivated enough to do it. I had to hire a professional organizer to come in a set up "stations" areas for me. That has help tremendously. She cost $50/hour. But I invested in that several years ago. And basically she help me organize the ideas that I had in my head and tweaked and suggested lots of other things to make the house and cleaning run smoother. So if this is an option I would highly recommend it. If the kids knows exactly where there things need to go, it will be easier for you to ask that they put thier things back where it belongs. Once you set them up to where they can clean after themselves then you can make it a reward system. Say, the first person to pick up their toys/belonging gets to choose "special" time with you. That could be something that only you and they get to do. Go to the park, watch a movie, they get to pick the movie for family video night, or they get to choose what's for dinner, or the dessert for that night. You can be creative without spending money. Keep a chart out in the open where you reward each child with a point for things, or you can cut out an 8 section circle. Once a child does something "good" (that you may have already set the standard for; vacuums, puts their back pack away, put away their laudry, cleans their toys, the things that you know they can do and you would like them to do it) then you reward them with a piece of the pie, once their pie is full then they earn a reward. Be creative and enlist the help of your children. No matter how old they are they can still help. We started our kid from the time they could walk to start puting thier toys away. And since their toys go into different bins that have been lable/pictures they know exactly where everything goes.
If you need more creative suggestions let me know.
____@____.com
A.
