Three Helpful Tips

These are three practical things I've found helpful lately.

1)Before School Job Lists

I sometimes find it very stressful getting my children ready for school in the mornings. One child in particular is very easily distracted and needs supervising all the time. I would get very frustrated saying, "Have you done this yet? Have you done that?"

So I made up these lists to help keep everyone focused and when they've ticked off everything for the morning they can choose a special sticker for down the bottom. When the whole list is finished, there will be some kind of treat. It's not perfect, but it definately helps a lot. So much that I made up ones for after dinner jobs aswell.

2) Ten Things To Find in the Bedrooms
To keep my children from being hoarders, I find it helpful on Saturdays after the morning jobs are done, to give them each a bowl and ask them to find 10 things to put in it from their rooms. Ten things that either don't belong in their room, rubbish (but not from their rubbish bins!) or things they don't want or need anymore. They can't always find that many things, but even if they only find 5 or so, it helps keep their rooms under control. If its too hard, a reward might help!

3)To Make Rooms Bigger, Try Getting Rid of Some Space Fillers
One of the children's bedrooms has the lego and toys in it. And because the children play lots in there, it's hard to keep tidy. So I was looking around the other day trying to find a way to make it work better. And I realized that by rearranging things better, and making full use of under the bed, under the cot and the built in closet, we could move out the big desk and the big set of drawers. Now everything  is more out of sight when tidy, and there is lots more space on the floor for playing. It also helped to get rid of some things that were not played with.  One of the other children liked it so much they looked around in their own room and wanted to get rid of a big cupboard in her room. We were able to do a similar thing in her room and now her room seems bigger too. It's definately not always possible, but by getting rid of unused things and being creative, sometimes we can make more space by getting rid of things that we thought we needed.