Tuesday Tallies & Kid's Organization

As you can see, this week was a little more busy than usual.. only 6 puffs completed.  My favorite of this bunch is the one in the upper left had corner - I'll have to make sure that's somewhere in the middle when I sew all these together :o)

 My sister-in-law sent me a photo of a chore box.  I thought it was such a great idea that I created one for our kids here!

 When she sent me the photo, I quickly put it on my to do list and it just sat there.  Well...earlier this week I wanted to mop the floor and the amount of kid's stuff that I would have to pick up just to start this job seemed daunting.  I realized that sometimes I get frustrated and demoralized because to complete any task there are several steps of "clearing" that need to happen first.  I guess you can imagine what happened next....the floor did not get mopped, but this box was born.

 Then I created the chores.  I kind of just walked around the house and wrote down things that needed to be done.

 Then I typed them up, cut them apart, and folded them.  There were several more sheets than the ones above and now that I have been able to think about it more I have quite a few other "chores" that I have added.  There are also a couple of "free pass" tags in there as well.

 The basket for picking chores.  I hold it just above eye level so there is no trying to pick a certain job.

 Just love it....

This is our box that first day.  One of my sons had all of his shoes in there!  Books, bags, jackets, and a broken toy (it needed to be won back so it could be thrown away).  The kids worked diligently - all of them had things in there - and pretty soon the box was empty.

It has been a few days now and I have not had to add anything to the box.  There has been an unexpected upside to this, the kids are going around every evening to pick up their things (that's not unexpected) and while they are doing that, when they spot something that belongs to a sibling they are either picking it up for them, or calling that kid to pick it up.  It has fostered a general working together and taking care of each other (this is the unexpected part!)

I'll keep you posted on how this continues to work (or not work).  The kid's "To Do" list from last week is still working fabulously.  They get up and it is almost a race to see who can move the clothes pins from one side of their board to the other.  The big test will be if this plan will be workable once school starts and we don't have as much free time.

Check out Carole's for more Tuesday Tallies and check out 5 minutes for mom for more Tackle it Tuesday projects.  These are great sources of inspiration for me :o)