Disgusting habits and taking responsibility

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2 banana peels, 1/4 banana and 4 apple cores is what I found this week under her bed.
And all sorts of wrappers that don't bother me too much in the great scheme of things as they are only paper after all.
DD is 11 1/5 and has done this since we moved to Belgium when she was 4.5. She never did it before that although she did have a habit of emptying pots and tubes and would play with the contents given a chance when we lived in England.

We have explained to her it attracts vermin. She tells me the cat will catch them with a smile on her face (cat is a very good mouser indeed but that is not the point. So I tell her we will have even more flies than we already get in summer. And then she drops her lower lip and says sorry.

Can't seem to get it through to her it is not the done thing to leave fruit peel and cores on the carpet behind and under her bed or anywhere else in her room for that matter.

Been telling her for over 5 years now. Will she ever get it? Am I expecting too much?
Was told a few years back that maybe my expectations were too high. So I lowered them and try to concentrate on things that do matter. Like the common sense that food rests and other 'wet' rubbish should go in the bin at all times instead of throwing them somewhere in a corner?
Or am I still expecting too much

What if you put a little waste bin with a lid next to her bedside?

There used to be one. She never really used it and now she has a big open bin that she does use to put paper rubbish and other stuff in. Downstairs she will put peels and fruit in the bins but in her room they end up on the floor even with a bin in her room.

I once read about a boy who's chore was to take out the trash.
He often didn't do it.
Then his mother decided to dump the trash in his bed if he didn't do his chore.
She did that once and after that he always took the trash out.

Can you compost? Would getting her a compost bin be an option? Maybe if she could use the cores and peels in an interesting way, she wouldn't leave them under her bed.

From your description, I'd guess she likes watching the cat catch mice. It's interesting, I'm sure, and it probably makes the cat happy. The cat, in that context, is useful and part of the cycle of life. Compost is useful and part of the cycle of life as well. I don't know. I think it's worth a try though.

My parents would have punished me. It wouldn't have traumatised me, and I would have learned to put my rubbish in the bin. Sometimes the hygiene of your house is more important than a few hurt feelings.

A suggestion
We are a very busy household with four children two grandparents a very untidy husband who has neurological deficits post cva including short term and visual memory and I who gets very anxious about disorder - a bit of a recipe for disaster.
Eventually after trying star charts pleading explaining shouting ignoring cleaning and every other possible ... Ing I went for a simple food stays in the kitchen please this works largely for all including my husband and my two As children as well as the neurotypical ones
Try it in case it might work for you

So, a rule we have because we don't want this to happen, ever, is that we don't allow food out side the kitchen except under special circumstances. The special circumstances are on movie night the kids are allowed popcorn on the sofa. OTher wise no food anywhere outside the kitchen, ever and no drinks other than water outside the kitchen, ever. It's worked really well and it's very black and white which makes it easy to follow.

We do have the no food upstairs rule, kitchen is too small to eat in.
Which on the whole she keeps to
But she steals and stashes food to eat at night.
Layout of the house means it's next to impossible to keep food locked away.
And for the rest she is pretty good putting rubbish in the bin.
It's just this fruit at night business.
Was actually the first time in weeks I had bought fruit.
Tried all sorts over the years and for interest she can always throw the apple cores in the garden and the banana peels are allowed to be thrown in the woods next door.
As for punishment, she is pretty impervious. Takes it all in her stride, she is a slow learner.

We have this problem during Halloween, with candy, so we hide the candy at night and allow our kids to eat a couple during the day and it gets hidden away at night. Could you hide the fruit somewhere out of her reach, like in your bedroom closet before bed and lock your room until you get home? Then let her have a banana and apple during the day, only in the at the table and PRAISE her when she throws away the peel/core. If you do this on a daily basis, she should get used to it. If she is a slow learner you have to be consistent, good luck.

When I was a kid I would never have left food scraps to rot in my bedroom. I kept my belongings neat and clean to the point of OCD-like behavior that continued until my late 20's and drove me crazy because sometimes I couldn't leave until I'd rearranged everything several times. It was the state of the rest of the house I didn't care about, and my mother and I fought about it a lot. Since my parents were at work all day I was expected to clean and do laundry and wash dishes and cook supper and many days I would have rather gotten a root canal except for maybe cooking, but I hated washing dishes so much it took the pleasure out of making a meal, that and my brother would nearly always say that whatever I cooked was terrible and make stupid jokes about it. Oh, and *he* was the one who had rotting garbage in his room along with piles of other junk.

How about allowing her one piece of fruit on a plate at night, if she consistently takes the plate + fruit leftovers to the kitchen the next day? On the positive side of things, at least she is eating fruit. Many kids don't.
I know that I can't sleep when I'm hungry, so I often eat something before sleep.

It sounds like this is all kitchen refuse. The composting idea sounds great, but I'd take it a step further. Build some structure around this by posting visual rules on the wall with little cartoons of "how to eat a fruit" that culminates with composting the remains. But then take the compost, and do something useful and intellectually exciting with it. Maybe vermiculture?

That might explain why all these things end up under her bed when she uses the wastebasket for other things; If she knows she's not supposed to have food in her room it's possible she's deliberately hiding the wrappers, cores and peels under her bed because she thinks you'll see them if she throws them in the garbage -- or that she doesn't think about throwing them out (literally, doesn't think about it at all) because she's too busy thinking about hiding them (and then forgets about them, or just never thinks far enough ahead to consider what will happen to the garbage after she hides it under her bed).

If the "no food upstairs" rule doesn't work and is impossible to enforce, I suggest getting rid of it and instating a new rule like "food scraps go in the wastebasket if you eat in your room"; "food is only allowed in your room if food scraps and wrappers are thrown in the wastebasket"; or "no foods with peels or cores allowed in your room"/"only [x,y,z -- specific foods that aren't messy and won't leave scraps] may be eaten in your room". That way, she only has one rule to remember, there would never be an issue with which rule takes priority ("no food upstairs"? or "food scraps go in the bin"? ... priority may be considered consciously or it may just be whichever one is thought of first), and she would have no reason to hide wrappers and food scraps (other than habit, I suppose).

I agree with the person who pointed out the key info that she is stealing & stashing the food. When I read the original post, it immediately reminded me of myself in high school-- I used to hide food wrappers under my bed. It had nothing to do with having gross habits or not understanding what I was *supposed* to be doing with garbage-- it had everything to do with the fact that it was secret, hidden food and the wrappers or garbage was the "evidence" that I needed to hide. I had every intention of secretly throwing it all out later, but I remember once my mom found the evidence and we were both horrified.

I think if you want it to stop, you need to address the real issue-- why is she stealing/stashing food? In my case, it was because I wanted to binge on junk food that my mom would not have approved of. But in this case, it sounds like mostly healthy stuff-- fruit-- so maybe she really just needs a snack at that time but doesn't want to ask for it, or maybe there is something she really enjoys about the sneakiness of it... getting away with it. Maybe she likes to eat in privacy sometimes, so that is why she wants to eat it in her room... and then she knows it's forbidden so she has to hide the evidence. Anyway, maybe talk to her about that (the stealing/sneaking) rather than the garbage itself. See if she is just hungry, or what. And if you can't come to some kind of solution you may simply need to control the food... I have to hide apples in my house because my youngest son will eat just one bite out of each one and then throw it on the floor somewhere.... and then eat one bite out of another one, etc... very frustrating. As much as I'd like to teach him NOT to do that, in the meantime it's easier to just hide the apples and then give him one when he asks for one, and then make sure he eats it where I can see him....

Also, FWIW, the sneaking/hiding food thing can be a sign of an emerging eating disorder. It was for me (never a serious one, but I certainly had a dysfunctional relationship with food), and I know it's pretty common behavior for that kind of thing. You may want to keep an eye on that.