How messy is your kid's rooms?

If your family is anything like mine, then your kids' messy rooms are a continuing issue your house.

Right this very moment my daughter is attempting to tackle her disgusting dirty clothes ridden room and my son's bedroom floor is so littered with Lego and K'nex pieces that trying to maneuver them in the dark is like maneuvering a mine field! Not exactly what I pictured when I was helping them decorate their rooms in the first place!

In fact this 'messy room' issue is so common there are huge industries devoted to dealing with this very problem.

There are TV shows, designers, magazines and books dedicated to organizing and decorating kid's rooms. And there are countless storage products to make this job a little easier.

There is even a contest running in Chicago "Looking for the messiest kids' rooms" that will give the winner the opportunity to have their child's room tackled by a professional organizer.

But where is the real problem?

Have we not properly trained our children to pick up after themselves? Do they have logical places to store things? Is the 'system' we've designed for them too hard to do? i.e. Racks and hooks too high, drawers too sticky, toy box so big they have to empty it to find things.

Do they just have too much stuff, which makes organizing it a nightmare?

Are our own standards too high that they are impossible for them to achieve? Or maybe so low ,that things get way beyond what our child can tackle, before we do anything about it?

So what do you think? Should we as parents do a better job of training our kids or should we resign to a messy room being part of the parenting experience?

Tell me your messy kids' room stories.