Kitchen Nightmares

Anyone else have nightmares about their kitchen? I do and here is why. No matter how often I clean, it becomes the catch all! See, New Year's Day I had all of the counters and the floor fairly clean and neat. Yet this was yesterday!

 Of course, after a few hours I managed to tame the mess but it was still pretty irritating! There were groceries and toys and snow clothes and the counters were crazy! I didn't even post the pictures of that! SCARY!

I admit it. I am still not happy with my floors. I am struggling to find a way to get them polished well that doesn't leave streaks or dull marks!

So my nightmare is that I finally got my floors cleaned and started to tackle the counters. You know by the time I get the counters done the floor will be totally trashed again! It seems like it is a never ending cycle. So I have created the start to my solution! I have created a Mommy Ransom bin. I have a large bin that I am putting in things that belong to the kids but get left in my clean areas because they didn't clean up after themselves. To get the items back I am creating a list (separate from their normal chores) that is all things they must do to get something back out of the bin. We will see how valuable things really are to the children. I am trying to decide how I can track how long something has been in the bin because after a month in the bin I am convinced the kids don't actually care about the item anyway and will be prepared to give it to Goodwill or some such place!

Does anyone else have a bin like that? Does it work well for you? What types of things do your children have to do to pay ransom for the stuff you have confiscated?