Kids, clean your room! .... ???

 

I'm struggling with how much to "make" the kids clean their room.
I understand that we've been in transition for almost a year and there is never a place for everything. We just haven't been diligent about organizing toys (legos go in this box, puzzles get stacked on this shelf, etc) because we always know it's short term.
Super fun.

I started telling the kids that we'd work on organization at our new house and that we'd have to all work on picking up our things. We talk about how it's frustrating when we can't find what we want or stepping on toys, etc.

The kids agreed.
We'll have a plan.
In the new house.
That's when we'll start.

We were talking about it with Ren Man and he said that when he was a child he never cleaned his room.
He thinks this is because the only thing the children in his family did in their rooms was get dressed and sleep.
So there were no toys in his room to make a mess.
He said one day he looked around his room and decided he wanted to clean it, so did.

In contrast, his cousin was required to clean his room before Ren Man could go visit or the cousin could come over to Ren Man's house. Ren Man is fairly certain this cousin still does not routinely clean his room.
I would argue Ren Man could be a little neater himself - but who couldn't?

At my house growing up most of our toys were in the living room but some toys were in our rooms and we had a healthy collection of books (books being a HUGE contributor to our children's bedroom mess right now). We were required to clean our bedrooms.

So I'm torn.
Require cleaning of the bedroom?
I think modeling ("Let's clean up the books because I'm noticing that they are ripping when we step on them. Can you help?"; "dolls go in the doll bath so we can keep them off the floor and Eden won't chew on them." etc)

Thoughts? Should kids have to clean their rooms?