Daughter’s Lego habit clashes with mother’s cleaning

Hello, Carolyn: I have a 10-year-old daughter who loves Legos. She has built a world covering the (small) amount of open space in her room. There is an open-air market, a variety of vehicles, and two extensive emergency bed areas. There are probably 30-40 people, and every time one of them falls/gets knocked over/loses an appendage, the paramedics come and bring them to the hospital, and she does extensive building/healing/whatever to get them back to the game.

Anyway ... I was deep-cleaning the rugs. She refused to move her Legos, and I told her if she didn’t, someone else would. She cried hysterically, I moved them, some of them got broken. I told her going forward we will be vacuuming her room on a weekly basis, and the Legos will be moved every time. Now she cries, gets angry at me, acts nasty, etc., every time it’s brought up, or even when I am around and she is playing with her Legos.

I will stick to my guns — OMG she sounds like such a spoiled brat based on this, but I swear this is not how she normally is! — but how do I get through this? I have told her that if she can come up with a good alternate solution/compromise, we can talk. She is an only child, her other parent and I are divorced, and she keeps all her Legos here. Sticking to My Guns

Nothing about her sounds “spoiled brat”-ish. Nothing. It’s her thing! It’s also creative to the nth, and the world around her has gone to hell, so for the love of blockheads please leave her creative refuge intact. If the rug is inviting vermin, then teach her to clean it herself, carefully.