Scottish Teen Hits Jackpot by Cleaning His Room

Count Ryan Kitching as the one teenager who will never again complain about having to clean his room.

When the 19-year-old from Midlothian, Scotland, succumbed to his mom's nagging to clean out his bedroom in his parent's home last month, he found not only dirty laundry and food crumbs but 12 old lottery tickets buried among the piles.

One of them, it turned out, was a winner that made Kitching, a part-time supermarket worker, $83,781 richer.

"It would take me four or five years to earn this amount of money, and now I've got it all at once," Kitching told the  London newspaper The Telegraph.  "I am totally speechless - it was the happiest day of my life easily."

Kitching  told the paper he was about to throw the tickets away in the throes of his cleaning spree when he got a "strange feeling" that he should keep them instead.

He took the tickets to the Tesco supermarket, where both he and his mom, Susan, work and had a co-worker check the numbers.  After the co-worker began shouting that he thought Kitching had "a big winner," Kitching called the lottery operator, Camelot, to confirm his prize.

"I was over the moon," he said.  "Next time she [his mom] nags me to tidy my room, I won't need telling twice."

That should be music to the ears of his mom, considering what she said it took for her to get him to clean his room in the first place.

"I'd be  nagging him for weeks to clean his room," she told the Telegraph.  "Hopefully, he'll listen to me next time."

Kitching is already paying it forward with his prize, promising to take his mom and dad on a vacation, and taking their advice to put money down on a home as well.

Also benefiting from Kitching's clean room is his 16-year-old brother, Sean, whom Kitching says will get a new car.