Clothes? They belong on the floor, don’t they?

This should be entitled “The Ballad of Teen Clothing”, perhaps, but I find it baffling that my otherwise highly engaged and aware teen daughter A-, who is now 16 and cooks for her siblings, helps with lots of chores, etc, has a blind spot when it comes to clothes.

If you have a teen you know what I’m talking about. They take off their clothes and just drop them on the floor at that spot.

Done.

Here’s the thing: I’ve talked with her – ad nauseum, actually – about this and while parenting literature suggests that teens are quite literally disconnected with certain things like cleanliness and organization, she says that she is aware that she drops her clothes and never picks them up. She just doesn’t think about it.

I realize that children, by both their very nature and developmental stages, live in the moment, but is it so hard to pick up your $&*($)# clothes after you change?

I know, it’s a common problem and honestly, if it were just in her room, neatly corralled behind a closed door, I’d care a lot less about it.

But it’s anywhere she changes, so if she changes into exercise clothes to use the elliptical in my office, her jeans, blouse, sweatshirt and other clothes sit, lonely, forlorn and abandoned on my office floor until I do something about it.

Bah!

I know, it’s a First World Problem because this implies that a) she has enough clothes that she doesn’t have to track each and every item, and b) we have a big enough place that she can spread out, but darn it, it’s annoying!

Usually I’ll take all her dirty clothes, anything that’s left on the floor of the bathroom, etc, and dump it all on her bed, but that doesn’t see to be very effective, other than making one pile instead of many.

Suggestions? Any “carrot” approaches, rather than the proverbial “stick”?

Maybe we just need wear-once paper clothing like they had in The Andromeda Strain. Hmmm….