Don't lecture me about lying to your kids. We do it with Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. So how is this any different? It's been a battle lately with Christopher doing anything I ask. He just looks at me all serious and says "No." I'm working really hard with him and some of it's paying off, but the one thing he doesn't want to do is clean up his toys. And he loves to dump the baskets out, never touch a toy and then walk away. I'm not sure if he's really looking for something or just likes doing that. But I was reading my latest issue of Parents magazine the other day and there was an article about a mom who was also fed up with the clutter on her floor and decided to tell her son about the Pickup Fairy. The other night I was trying to get him to pick up his toys and so I told him about the Clutter Fairy. (I couldn't remember the original name.) His first reaction when you try to tell him something like this, truth or not, he just smiles and says, "noooo" like he doesn't believe you. I started to go into more details, just like the other mom, but the clutter fairy is nice, her's was scary b/c her son likes things that are a little more scary. I told him that it makes her sad when children tell their parents they don't want to clean up and so she figures those children don't appreciate their toys and don't care to play with them anymore. She comes and takes all the toys off the floor and brings them back to her tree house in the woods and plays with the toys for a week and has so much fun! He's sitting there thinking about it and then as serious as he can be says, "Mommy, come help me clean up so the fairy won't take my toys." I said ok and we jumped up getting all the toys off the den floor. As soon as we are done he says, "where'd the clutter fairy go?" Next we went back to his bedroom and I told him we needed to clean that up too and he, out of breath, says, "Hurry Mommy! Where'd the fairy go?" It took all I had to not let him see me laugh. Last night we had the Ramages over for some ice cream since we haven't been able to get together with them for a while and I told them my latest trick. So, when it was time to go, matt asks Christopher about the cleanup fairy and the little guy went running down the hall yelling at William to help him clean up before the fairy comes. We loved it! So, if you think what I'm doing is wrong, just take a second look at your floor and think about how clean mine is and no yelling was involved to get there.