Day: December 12, 2006

The five minute clean up is my new best friend. One day I hauled each kid individually into their bedrooms with the requirement that we both clean as hard as we could for 5 minutes. At the end of 5 minutes the kid was done whether or not the room was clean. Two kids per room means that each room got 10 minutes worth of cleaning. Lo and behold 10 minutes was all it took to make the floors vacuumable again. I spent 20 minutes and each of the kids spent five.

On both of the nights since that project I have enforced a five minute clean up in our toy strewn family room. This time all the available children were drafted for the same five minutes. I really had to crack the whip to keep them moving, but at the end of five minutes the room was clean and I didn’t have to be mean any more.

I’ve also been applying this to myself. I’ll take 5 minutes and pick up my bedroom or my office or the front room. Doing a 5 minute pick up breaks down the huge “clean the house” task into bite size chunks. Everyone knows that bite size chunks are much easier to eat a lot of.

My house has been much nicer and cleaner these past three days. Yay for good advice via LJ!

This morning I decided to treat myself to sausage mcgriddles on the way home from dropping kids at school. Patches was in the car with me, so I planned to get him one too. I also decided to bring one home for Howard. We pulled up to the drive through window to Patches delight. He loves to buy food to take home. Instantly from the back seat there was a littany of “They sell hambuwgews? I want a hambuwgew!” I shushed him and placed an order for 4 sausage mcgriddles. Patches was paying attention because he switched to asking for mcgriddles.
“I want a mcgwiddle!”
I was relieved that we weren’t going to have an upset over the lack of hamburgers at 10 am. “That’s good, because I have one for you.”
In a matter of fact voice Patches announced. “You have fouw.”
I was suprised that he’d paid such close attention. “That’s right. I have four. One for you, and one for me, and one for Daddy.”
I couldn’t see Patches face because I was driving, but his tone of voice made very clear that he was not at all fooled my attempted misdirection. “That’s fwee.” He informed me.
I suddenly felt a need to explain further. “The extra one is for me because I am super hungry.” There was a brief silence then Patches announced:
“I’m super hungwy.”
I think I answered with something along the lines of him needing to finish his first one and then we would see about others. He thought for a moment then asked
“Can mine be extwa?”
“Sure, yours can be extra.”
“Then we will have two extwas. One for you and one for me.”

So we took home our mcgriddles and ate up all the extras.