A Little Help, Please

I have a dilemma. I've been thinking about his for quite some time now, and I'll admit, I'm at my wits' end.

My daughter refuses to clean her room, and, if ever it does get clean, it is messy again within hours. What's a mom to do?

A friend and I talked about this the other day and discussed how it seems like such a ridiculous thing to waste hours and hours arguing about. I remember many occasions as a child that my mother and I argued about the state of my room. I remember purposely dragging my feet because I didn't want to clean my room.

Now I'm the mom and I'm not ashamed to say that these room-cleaning arguments are kicking my trash!

If I encourage Noel to clean her room and keep it this way, there are some positive side effects.

• A clean room = less broken and lost toys.
• A sense of pride and accomplishment.
• She learns good stewardship.
• The seeds of good housekeeping (handy for when she's a grown-up with her own house) are planted.
• Less funky odor emanating from her room. (Seriously.)
• She learns that it's important to obey your parents, even when you don't agree with them.
• She learns that some things in life are no fun and that 's it's best to dive in and be done with them.
• Things are easier to find, there are less already-running-late instances of "Where is my other shoe?"
• She learns responsibility.

I can't think of many negative aspects of the argument of her keeping her room clean, but here are the few I can think of.

• It's her room, if she wants to live like a slob so be it.
• All of the arguing is killing me.

What would you do? Really. I need some feedback here, because I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.

Thanks in advance, bloggy friends.