Cleaning Up Joyfully...

I've read so much about what kind of parent I want to be; I am not an instinctive parent, but when I read about parenting styles I know instinctively what is right (HA! Who am I to judge?) I was describing my mother and a bit of family history with a friend and she said to me "Ohhhhh, that's why you read so many parenting books...." I'd never thought of it that way. This is kind of how I stumbled into attachment parenting. We were reading all these books about being pregnant, and how the baby was developing, and I said to hubby "We better get some books on how to take care of a baby....." He bought the Sears' Baby Book. Which was the best one he could have. It started with the premise that you take what you wanted from the book, and ignore everything you didn't agree with. This kept me reading. I was going to breastfeed on a 4 hour schedule (thanx mom.) baby was going to be in a crib, sleep the night thru at 6 weeks....etc.....HA HA HA!!!!! I went from that to a LLL leader.......EEEEEEEanyways I digress.....I was reading a cool article and something really hit me in the head. Something that I knew already and forgot, something that I do most of the time, but forget when I'm tired or frustrated....basically if you make a big deal about how crappy it is to clean up after your kids, then why would they ever take joy or want to clean up after themselves, since it's such a drag for mom. My normal procedure is to get the boys and say "Let's organize your room!" and we all tromp in and have a cleanfest. And it's usually great together time. And in fact, I'm pretty ok with a messy bedroom. However, toys gradually get spread all over the house, in multilayers, and this mommy would like some sort of, I don't know, method to my madness. Trust me my house doesn't smell like bleach...and I'm a clutterbug.....but I'd like to be able to vaccum once in awhile....I don't care if there's toys out....it's when there are trains, hotwheels, tinkertoys, AND lego etc out....spread out.....(ok I know my kids have too many toys...I'm working on simplifying) that I start to go looney. After play toys away. Clean up clean up everything in its place. I get frustrated and start getting ticked, and take the JOY out of it. They don't look happy, I'm not happy, noone's enjoying themselves.....I *know* instinctively that this is NOT WORKING and NOT THE WAY TO INSPIRE them but I keep at it.....silly me. This has got to stop.