Good morning!

As you can see, I am at my backdoor in my kitchen and it's a tad bit chilly. Today is a no makeup, messy hair kinda day ;o) I am going to try...keyword here is try...to blog each morning and each night. That way, in the mornings I can post about what I hope to accomplish each day and at night I can see if I actually accomplished it! So I think today is going to be the day (after cleaning) that I am going to share some of the blogs I found on how to become more organized in my cleaning schedule. There are so many people out there that are so much more organized than I am and I will pay credit where it is due.

Pinterest.com is my "go-to" place when I am searching for motivation and ideas to clean my house. I do have 6 children (although, 2 of them don't live at home anymore) and the 4 that live at home are not so great when it comes to cleaning. The youngest is only 19 months and he is the worst about throwing his things around my living room... Have you ever tried to get a stubborn 19 month old boy to clean? When my older girls (14, 11, and 18) try to sweep things in a pile to go through it, he will sit in the middle of the pile and find things to throw out of the pile! BUT if he sees his older sisters or my husband and I put things in his toy box, he will find WHATEVER (even if it's trash) he can get his hands on to "help" put his stuff away.
One of the greatest things I have found on Pinterest.com is called a "Ransom Box".

What this wonderful lady, at Just Another Day in Paradise, does is, pick up her children's things and puts them in her "Ransom Box" and they must do a chore to get them out! It definitely makes kids think twice before leaving their things out ;o) She even includes a list of chores on her site (if you can't think of any of your own, like me) that are great for kids of any age. On another site, Mads Memories, she came up with really fun and some funny "chores" for kids! My particular favorite is, "Rub dad's feet for 10 minutes and do 'this little piggy' to him"! My kids hate this chore because (although I love him) my husband is not very good at taking care of his feet ;o) He has worked in construction his whole life and we found out about 2 years ago that he has Type 1 Diabetes (which he is managing, thankfully, without insulin!) so, needless to say, his heels form very hard callouses (thank the Lord for pedicures...which I get but my husband feels that it is a girl thing...even though I convinced him to get one...ONCE) on them and when the kids are forced to touch them (as per the chore mentioned) they squirm the whole time!!! My 19 month old son hasn't quite understood the concept of the "Ransom Box" yet, but he will and we are teaching him each day, the importance of cleaning up after himself.
So that is just the tip of the iceberg of what I hope to accomplish today. Please check out these blogs because they have some very wonderful ideas on other ways to get chores done! A Girl and A Glue Gun has even thought of a way, that if the kiddos want to make extra money (picture #2 below), they can! Organized Mom came up with this little poem (pictured below) and I couldn't think of a price/chore list to give to my kids to do to make that extra money...

This is her own little twist on the "Ransom Box"

Chore magnets!!!

 

As I said, I couldn't think of prices for things or even chores that they may want to do for that extra money, but these wonderful magnets gave me somewhat of an idea on what to do! Now, I just need to make them and implement them in my daily cleaning activities! If, like me, you currently don't have the funds to create these magnets, you can still put 2 envelopes on your "Ransom Box" and mark one as "Extra Cash" (so your kids know that the unmarked envelope is the chores they must choose from to get their item out of "jail" and the other is to earn extra cash) and write the chores on Popsicle sticks with a sharpie that they can randomly draw out!

Now it's off to clean my cute little 3 bedroom townhome (I know, insane to have with as many kids as I do....but it's home). I will be back this evening to share some of the cleaning lists/blogs/sites I have found that help my cleaning schedule stay on track. Until then, enjoy the little things in life because you never know what tomorrow will bring.