What a Day

We are out of school and still trying to figure out our "presummer" schedule. Not going as smoothly as I had hoped. Per usual, I'm not budgeting enough time for everything. My plan is to get up, put in a load of luandry, eat breakfast, read the paper, spend 15 minutes cleaning up breakfast and other miscellaneous straightening in the kitchen, then go upstairs, get dressed, make beds, brush teeth and hair...then do the day.

We did all that, then took out the kitchen scraps, turned the composter a few times, watered our poor thirsty Bachelor Button, Sunflower, Pumpkin and Gourd seedlings, folded a load of laundry, hung the wet laundry, grabbed our list of things we needed to do and headed out the door......2 hours after we got up!

I have decided to institute tickets to my children. They are going to start with 5 each in the morning. For every behavioral problem, they lose a ticket. For every wonderful thing, over and above the normal, they get a ticket. Tickets can be used for lots of things...one ticket can be used for 15 minutes of stories, 15 minutes of TV, or a board game or puzzle. We shall see! Of course, this all will depend on my being able to keep these tickets straight!

We have also been doing random 10 item clean ups throughout the day.....I'll just say pick up 10 things...we all do it, it takes 2 minutes and tends to keep the clutter at bay. We even headed into the dark abyss of the cellar, where the mountain of bags, backpacks, shoes, jackets and miscellaneous crap creates quite the challenge.......3 minutes and it made a difference!