Organized Madness

For those select few I actually invite over to my house, you know it can be quite the mess most of the time. Try as I might, I can never seem to keep up with my kids (or my husband). They are slobs and depending on my level of enthusiasm I can be quite slobbish too. Do I wanna have a messy house? No! Does walking into a messy house cause me to have a inner breakdown? Yes! Nothing...I repeat....NOTHING ruins my day more than walking into a house that is a disaster. So how do I overcome this?

The obvious answer would be chores. Yeah...that's right. Chores. (There goes my mommy of the year award). Bird is 7 and Gryphy is 4. They are both old enough to be taking some part in helping out around the house. Not to mention, I absolutely refuse to allow my boys to grow up thinking house work is for women. We have tried doing chores in our house before but the last couple of systems we implemented didn't seem to work. So, what to do? The simplest approach is the chore chart. We tried it before, but I'm gonna try it again. Why would I do that if it didn't work the first time? Here's why. It wasn't the charts fault. That's right. It was mine and Williams. What can I say. We spoil our kids and let them slide by with way too much sometimes. This needs to stop. Especially before they start to think they can get away with murder. I want my boys to grow up to be loving, caring, responsible, hard working adults. This isn't going to happen if we continue on down the path we have started. Yes, it sucks to tell them they cant do something and then have them start crying over it, but that's what parents do. We tell our kids no, when they need to be told so. We send them to their rooms when they stomp their feet and throw a temper tantrum. We do this because it helps them to understand there are consequences for poor choices. I am hoping that with this go around, we can work together as a family to make the system work and that William and I can join forces and be stronger parents. Only time (and a whole lot of patience) will tell if its working or not...