Well, one very untidy bedroom, food cartons, dirty plates and cups, pop bottles, dirty washing, papers and books everywhere. . . so, after many, many nagging hours and no joy, severe action was needed. After looking for fake mice droppings online and finding nothing, I found a youtube video on making some. Black paint and rice. Ok, sorted, done Friday, little drops placed around his room.
Yesterday, concerned voice, he asked me to look at them. I had to keep a straight face as he worried about sleeping next to the "mice". They had been on his keyboard, his drawers, his shelves and on his bed. He vowed to clean up. We went looking at motorbikes. Came home, he lay on settee refusing to go into his room.
Sometime later he then somehow said that I had found some fake mice droppings online and used them. My face said it all, grinning away. "You have, haven't you, it's not mice droppings, is it?" I had to come clean 
. He had wondered how mice could jump onto his windowsill without any means to get on, pole vaulting mice perhaps? So cover blown, plan failed and no bedroom cleaned. (Yet!) Maybe the next step is to buy some mice?????
BTW. If anyone wants to know how to mimic rat droppings, you buy a packet of liquorice comfits and suck the sugar coating off the outsides.
We had a Jack Russell who hid behind the sofa doing this to a packet he'd nicked out of one of the kid's Christmas stockings. He didn't like the liquorice so he spat the middles out.
Believe me....they really DO look like rat droppings 
Maybe that's the next step merlot, buying a Jack Russell! Actually I did have one, my ex husband wouldn't let me take him when we split up and the dog subsequently bit his new wife! Go Buddy!
I have given up! He sat earlier on his bed, strumming his guitar. I asked him if that was what he was doing and said that ten minutes throwing things in a black bag would be more beneficial. (Actually I didn't use long words, they would take too long to get through his long, thick, curly, unruly hair!) He carried on playing. Then he went out with his mates, so I've had a lovely night on my own.
I've just learned these last few months not to rise to his mood swings and to let him be if he is being a pain. He was worried this morning that Donald Trump was going to get to be President so I didn't rise to his arguments and left him to go to college and discuss it there. 
Registering is free, easy, and means you can join the discussion, watch threads and lots more.
Register now »Already registered? Log in with:
Gransnet »