The Maid

A few weeks ago Mary informed me that I needed to stop treating her like a baby.

So in an attempt to do just that I came up with a new idea to try to solve all the stress involved with trying to get them to pick up toys. Let's just say sometimes our "heaven on earth" disappears when it's time to clean up all the toys, shoes, books, etc.

I told Mary and Alex that I would give them some time to pick up and then if they didn't pick them up the "maid" could come and pick them up. However, the kicker was that maids get PAID to work. Whatever the maid picked up they would have to buy back.

Seems like a brilliant plan, right???

That remains to be seen.

Alex has never met money that he wasn't just dying to spend. So he'd rather just sit around and let me do the work and then get his bank out and buy it back. Maybe he'll learn his lesson when he's out of money. He'll run out of coins eventually.

Mary is a bit miserly at times and doesn't want to just shell out cash for no good reason. So this was pretty good motivation for her at first. Last Saturday afternoon I gave her 30 minutes to clean up the basement. She spent the whole time crying and sobbing about how she hated the maid game. She did manage to save some toys, but quite a few are sitting in the store room right now because she doesn't want to buy them back. Maybe I'll just donate them to Good Will soon. She was not thrilled when she had to buy back her jacket so she could wear it to school.

They did do better yesterday when I had them get started first thing in the morning BEFORE they were worn out from playing all day. While they picked up they were even singing, "It doesn't matter who it is." (I'm pretty sure they meant it doesn't matter "whose" toy it was as they picked up and didn't worry whether or not it was their own toy or someone else's.)