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In my day to day whirlwind of activities I find my self 'barking' at the kids alot - like a drill sergeant. I get home at 6ish and bark out orders "get the living room cleaned up, who left this in the floor, who broke this, clean up the floor, look at all these dirty dishes" and then I go about my business and assume they are following orders (HA!) then when I re emerge a couple of hours later, nothing has been done and so I bark some more and go back in to the sewing room - this cycle goes on forever back and forth every day until....

Thursday night! The boys were working on their usual chores Roman had the bedroom, living room and their bathroom and Sterling has Kitchen and Laundry. So they were whining about it being so boring and bla bla bla (insert Charlie Brown's teacher's voice). Roman says "we get tired of doing the same thing over and over again, can't we switch?" and Sterling chimes in "why don't you make a list of all the chores and pick different ones each day?" So I added one more notch - "we can make little slips of paper with the chores on them and put them in bowl and you can draw out chores one at a time - that way you'll never know what your drawing out". So I wrote down every chore on a piece of paper - but I broke them down into 5 minute tasks: instead of 'clean the living room' there are> pick up toys, pick up trash, clean behind couch, vacuum, dust ent center, etc.

THE BOYS LOVED IT! They were so hiped up about being able to complete a 'chore' in a short period of time that they would fly through and couldn't wait to do another chore. I stood and watched in amazement as they completed more than what they usually do in half the time it would take them normally. And they were so excited - I couldn't believe it! We have continued every night and I'm thrilled to say they are still just as excited - if I forget they will remind me to get the chore bowl down so they can draw!

....maybe I should try this with my to do list.....