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I'm a dyed in the wool list maker. I have lists of lists on my pda. I love making Excel files and highlighting boxes and sorting. It probably wont come as a surprise that I used to work in data collection.
So I have tried to tackle every challenge around this house with my number one favorite tool -- lists.
Take housework and clutter control for example. I've thrown lists at these people every which way from Sunday but do they clean up after themselves? Can it really be so hard to put a water glass in the dishwasher? Do I have to put that on a list too? They cringe when they see me grinning with my latest printout in my hands. The current master housework list is three pages long. Initial the chores you get done please, and you need to do at least one from column A and three from column B. Isn't this fun?
My most successful list was called "Chores for Food." I am not kidding. In order to get three small kids out the door in the morning I had to make a spreadsheet. Days of the week across the top, chores down the side, separate page for each kid. All three lists taped to the sliding glass door in the dining room, with a pencil on a string taped right next to each. The chores were grouped by time period. They had 6 things to get done before breakfast. Hard things, like "comb your hair." Can you smell my desperation? It was lists or nag. The faster they got them done, the sooner they ate. Ditto lunch, dinner, etc. They got allowance based on how complete their lists were. They worked beautifully.
Then I added schedules to the lists. "Pack library books" and "Pack piano music" only showed up once a week, so the got highlighted, and the rest of the days got x's on that line. The kids figured this system out too, although they'd remember library books and leave their lunch on the counter.
The list kept morphing into a product of my wishful thinking. Towards the bottom, between dinner and bedtime story, they had to check off "clear plate and cup" "clothes into hamper" "brush and floss" "pray" and "in bed on time." Caught the problem here? If they were in bed on time, they weren't going to be in the dining room checking off the checklist. So they'd check it off the next morning. And I trusted them.
It didn't take them long to catch on that mom was trusting them to be honest on their lists. Individual x's turned into lines with arrows going down the page. My son just blacked out big columns of boxes. The system deteriorated. But by that point they were old enough to remember things like brushing their teeth, if not flossing.
Before you accuse me of pure evil or OCD, let me just reveal what I found in each of the kids rooms recently.
They've made their own checklists. David Allen would be proud.
11 people stopped folding laundry to write:
Wohoo for lists! And for passing on the list gene! :-)
Always nice to meet a fellow listmaker!
And thinking of dishwashers, once within a few minutes of each other my three grown sons came into the kitchen looking for a clean cup.
They each opened the dishwasher, looked inside, turned to me and asked, "Are these clean?" My reply, three times over, "Nope."
One went back to his room and dug up a glass he'd forgotten was there, one found an old mug stuck in the back of a cabinet, and one resorted to drinking out of measuring cup.
None of them started the dishwasher.
Hysterical! The closest we've gotten to a group list is the "Mommy, write it down in your book in the kitchen."
Of course they're six...I'm aspiring to listers...;)
Lists for me help relieve the growin gpressure in my brain to remember it ALL. I have the lists, the carts and all the rest. My kids apparently are NOT LIST people. But I continue in vain....I guess I will never learn!
Umm, can you please come over and do this for me...brilliance I tell you.
My kid has an autism spectrum disorder called Asperger's Syndrome. When he was teeny tiny, we used a picture calendar to help him organize what was going on in our world: school, music class, vacations, holidays, trips to the library, doctor visits. The picture schedule morphed into his absolute love for a calendar. He checks our family calendar more than me, and reminds me when we have someplace to be.
I can't say as much for the lists, though. Somehow the "shiny objects" of fun get in the way of all that.
Hi there fellow laundress,
I have a great poem about how folding laundry is like poetry in that it imposes order on chaos....will have to post it for you on my blog.
my kids are 16 and 17 and I have started to trust them with their own laundry. It used to sit in piles on their floor, clean and ready to be put away, for weeks; now they manage with one dirty and one clean basket, and the rest is still on the floor. Sigh...instead of lists (although I am a fanatic list maker) I leave short notes to them to remind them to walk the dog, eat real food, not just granola bars; sometimes we actually have face to face encounters of the pleasant kind,
good luck and keep writing
jenn
2/3, you're my hero! :)
Lists are wonderful. They will thank you later for them :-)
bwah. Were we twins separated at birth.
I thought I was the only person who obsessed over lists ha ha.
I drive my son crazy as I type lists, print them out, make him sign each thing as it's done. I have lists upon lists everywhere. I even have them on my blog ha ha.
I'm a mom that isn't using lists and should be. In fact I'm going to go write one 'write' now. Great post!
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