My Genius Idea

One Saturday the kids were supposed to be cleaning their room. They started at 8 am. By 11, there was minimal progress made to their rooms and both Tyler and I had completely ran out of patience. It seems like this is a constant battle with these two. They NEVER want to clean up! I know it's normal for kids.. what can you do? Jace is especially frustrating because his excuse is "I can't do it." Those words are not allowed in our house. You can say that you need help to do it but not that you CAN'T. I just don't want the kids to have that type of attitude so we don't even let them say it. Mallori is just stubborn and even when she has the best intentions, she is a girl so she gets distracted. Look at the pictures I drew.. and I need to draw another one.. These clothes are on the floor, let's rearrange my drawer... you all know how it is!

So on this day I had HAD it! I couldn't take it anymore! I should also mention that my children are spoiled rotten and have WAY to many toys which makes it hard to keep them picked up. I tried the tactic my mom tried when we were little a long time ago. She would go through and throw away toys. What we didn't realize was that she was throwing away the cheap, junky toys from McDonald's, etc. When I tried this with Mallori and Jace, they caught on. Jace would say "I don't care.. you can get rid of that.. I don't play with it!" I didn't want to throw away the good ones because that is a LOT of wasted money!!

Ready for the genius plan?? I got two big black trash bags. One for Jace, one for Mallori. I set the kiddos on the couch while I held the bags and explained what would happen in the next few minutes... 1. Any toy, book, car, color, (you get the point) that was left laying on the floor would be put into the bag. 2. The bags would be put up. 3. The only way to get the toys back, would be to keep their rooms clean. For every day their rooms are clean, they could pick out one toy from the bag.

Mallori had one entire bag full, Jace had TWO and a lot of big toys that wouldn't fit so they are just stacked on the floor of our closet in Tyler's bathroom. It has worked great though! Not so much for Mallori, we still have to ask her but it has made the world of difference in Jace! Today I was going to sweep and mop the floors so I asked him what he was going to do. He answer.. "Go clean my room." And he did! He was finished before I was. So he picked out his blocks and played with them while I finished. An added bonus that I didn't think about: Not only are their rooms clean, but they are appreciating toys that they have had for every and just took for granted!

I don't know what I'm going to do when they get all of their toys back and we don't have any more rewards for cleaning... Guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there!

Also, I finally posted pictures from Mallori's soccer games!! If you click on the picture below, it will take you to the album. They didn't have their jersey's for the first game so those are the ones with the yellow shirt thingys.

Mallori Soccer