John Curley’s extreme clean

A mom sick of cleaning up after her kids is earning the praise of parents everywhere after going on, what’s become, a highly publicized strike.

Jessica Stilwell of Calgary, Alberta is getting plenty of attention for blogging about her work stoppage, prompted by the perpetual mess made by her three daughters.

Stilwell says after another long weekend of picking up after them, she finally got a chance to sit down and noticed none of the mess was hers.

So without much fanfare or grand gestures, she posted a simple note on her Facebook page: “This working mom has officially gone on STRIKE within the home!!! Nothing said, no warning…updates to follow:).”

It didn’t take long for things to fall apart. Stilwell documented a mounting mess in a series of blog posts.

“…[at] 6pm the breakfast dishes and dinner dishes are still sitting in their spot a the table, crusty by now. The dishwasher is overflowing, shoes and backpacks are in the middle of the hallway. Dirty socks, empty gatorade bottles and used kleenex litter the back of my couch,” she wrote on day one.

By about day three, things started to get gross. Stilwell stood her ground, and the kids finally started to notice.

“It was a pig sty, there was like milk everywhere. Cereal looked like oatmeal when it was actual cereal. There was like plates on top of plates I thought like ‘Ewww this is disgusting’,” her daughter Jessica told the Today Show.

It wasn’t enough to get them to start cleaning up after themselves. After six days the girls got sick of the mess and started blaming each other. Stilwell and her husband ended the strike. After explaining what she had done, she tells The Huffington Post they apologized, sort of – but not before one of them announced “that’s what parents are for, to clean up after their kids.”

KIRO Radio’s John Curley can relate. “My kids just mess the house up and so many times we’ve said “we’re done. Let’s see how you guys like living in a pig sty,” he says in response to Stilwell’s strike.

But Curley says he would have snapped far sooner, and has. At those times he’s turned to what he calls “turbo cleaning.”

“I would get a 50 gallon garbage bag and I would pick up everything in the garbage bag and I would throw it out, throw everything out,” Curley says.

Just a few problems. Curley admits there was plenty of of collateral damage. His wife had to dig through the trash to find stuff that shouldn’t have been thrown out. His daughter’s ski boots, clothes and other valuables all ended up in the garbage.

Eventually, common sense and his wife won out, but not before he made his point.

“I got away with four major turbo cleans where she wasn’t able to stop them and I remember watching the garbage man take it away as I turned away from the window with a sinister smile.”