Buy Time for Yourself and Delegate for Gods Sake!

Visions of my great grandmother's life on the farm in North Dakota, brought me to one of my first considerations about organization. Back in the day, parents had a boat load of kids because they needed  legal slave labor. Somewhere along the way, parents bestowed a sense of entitlement on our modern-day child freeing them to a life consumed by TV, computers and video games. Time for our robust little glazed-eyed spawn to get a taste of the good 'ole days. Ok, so that vision was a little harsh, but for many Americans, not totally off the mark.

The truth of the matter is that our kiddos get very little "screen time" and do their fair share of imaginative play when they aren't playing in the sand box or pool with their friends. Still, I can't deny that my 4-year-old was getting pretty comfortable with the served life and needed to take on some household responsibilities.

I decided that since Simmy, my 4-year-old, doesn't really have a concept of time, any chores that were given needed to be daily tasks, and for consistency reasons they needed to happen at the same time each day. He also needed an all-or-nothing monetary reward for his efforts.

Here's a shot of the chart that I created for him.

I paid him $1 a week for his chores. As you can imagine, I immediately became Mama Nag to Simmy. He reluctantly completed each chore in order to get his $1 pay out Sunday night. Still, the constant prodding on my part wasn't really saving me any time. A daily 25 cent bonus payout was needed to kick start a habit of doing chores without being told. This adjustment worked famously. Many a morning, while C.C. and I are still nestled in bed, we are woken to the rustling of little Simmy dressing, cleaning his room, making his bed and clunking his large rolling laundry basket down the stairs into the laundry room. I don't plan on correcting the laundry basket issue. This has evoked a new and necessary habit in C.C., Baby Pai and myself of waking up bright and early.