The Mediocre Mom's Guide to Greatness

Thursday May 6th, 2010

Today’s Activity:

Make Chores fun.

Note:

You can do this simply by singing a song while they are doing their chores or even by showing them by example that chores can be fun.  I know I don’t believe chores are fun either but if we pretend hard enough it just may come true.

Evaluate:

Lately our big chores have involved our new home.  Today we went to the house and started putting up painters tape and the kids LOVED it!  Elese mostly just wasted a bunch of tape and stuck clumps to the wall while Max was deemed my “Tape Monkey” and would hold the tape and hand it to me as needed.  It was lots of fun but how could it not be?  We are going to be painting our very own home!  That’s pretty exciting stuff.

Tags: chores, painting, song
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Saturday April 10th, 2010

Today’s Activity:

Enjoy the changing weather with your children by doing an indoor chore outdoors.

Note:

It doesn’t even have to be a chore, you could work on your laptop or read a book but whatever you choose to do do it outside.

Evaluate:

My house is a disaster and I feel completely overwhelmed looking at it.  By simply taking the laundry outside to fold it my chores were suddenly much more enjoyable.  Max and Elese have friends over and I like to be outside with them if they have others in the yard so this was a great way to get things accomplished while also supervising the kids.  Oh and the other thing I got done while outside was this blog post…hooray for a laptop and good wireless connection!

Tags: chores, outdoors
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Thursday February 4th, 2010

Monthly Goal:

So after some snapping, yelling I was forced to sit down and watch the Justice League with the kids.  They were extremely whinny today and the only way to get them to calm down was to sit with them.  Although it was by necessity, the nice thing I did today was sit and watch cartoons with my kids.

Come on ladies!  Who couldn’t use an extra $25 GC and a little bit of recognition?  Check this out if you don’t know what I’m talking about!

Today’s Activity:

I suppose this doesn’t really constitute as an activity but it will make things around your home more fun.  Rather than just telling your children to clean up their room or do their chores turn it into a race by telling them to see if they can be done before you finish singing the ABC’s.

Note:

Feel free to choose another song depending on how long it will take them to finish the chore.  You could also see if they could finish before you sing it 3 times.  Do your best to let them win this game because then they will want to play it more often.

Evaluation:

I’ve been doing this a lot lately and it’s been working really well.  For the most part the kids get excited about trying to finish as quick as possible.  I have noticed that setting a timer seems to be more effective than singing, at least for my kids.  Today it took them 10 times through the ABC’s but mostly because they would stop cleaning and just sing with me, then about 30 seconds later the house was a mess again.  Thus the lack of a photo, when I turned around from grabbing the camera to take an after photo the house was just as messy as before.

RECOGNITION:

Tracy spent some one on one time with her niece, did laundry, and helped her husband with his homework.

Hannah snuggled with her kiddos while watching a movie and she LOVED it!

Way to go ladies!  Not only did you get an entry into our drawing but you also made the day very special for the ones you love most!

Tags: chores, game, indoor, race
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House Cleaning

Fly Babies UNITE! Up until after my daughter was born my husband would go to work, come home, cook dinner, and clean the house.  I’m not really sure why, I wasn’t depressed or anything, I think maybe I just was so tired from waking up with a sleepless child (click here to read more about that) that I had no desire to do anything.   In my aunts desperate attempt to help my mom change her ways and have a clean house she gave my mom the Fly Lady book.   Honestly, it didn’t help her much but it did help me.  One day in my aunts desperate attempt to help my mom change her ways and have a clean house she gave my mom the Fly Lady book.   Honestly, it didn’t help her much but it did help me.  I did however prefer the website.  You can sign up for daily emails that tell you what to do.  The main idea is that you can do ANYTHING in 15 minutes.  My house is WAY more organized than it used to be and all my husband has to worry about is taking out the trash and doing the dishes when I ask for a little help.  When you have kids your house will get messy so why spend hours a day keeping it clean?  A couple 15 minute cleaning sessions will work wonders!

Dishpans are the key to getting your kids to help clean (at least for me).

Are you tired of tripping over toys all day?  This is what I did to resolve that problem in our home.  Each of my kids have a dishpan (we call it a “bin”) that they attempted to decorate (I need better craft materials).  At the end of the day or moments before we have visitors coming the kids (or I, depending on if they are home etc.) grab their bins and walk around the house filling them up with ANYTHING they have left laying around the house.  Then they put them next to my hope chest…it is out of the way so no one can see them unless they look for them.  At the end of each day they clean their room and put away everything in their bin.

After dinner clean up

I recently got sick of cleaning up after dinner while my husband and the kids either play together or read books so I put my foot down.  Now everyday after dinner everyone has a job to do.

Me: Dishes

Steven: Sweep the floor

Max: Wipe off the table

Elese: Clean the chairs

I am much happier and the kids LOVE having their very own job to do.

Chores

Elese (2 yo) doesn’t really have chores yet, just her bin and cleaning her room.  Max (5 yo) cleans his room, does the bin, makes his bed, and puts away the silverware when the dishwasher needs to be emptied.

Tags: Children cleaning, chores, flylady, house cleaning, toy pick up
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