Posted in FLYING and HGP
Well, all good things must come to an end and it is now time to put things back in order from all our merrymaking. Mind you, not that my house is a total wreck but it would be nice to find some place to sit 
When they were younger it was a little easier to coerces them into helping by playing Race Car Races where we would run around as fast as we could and put stuff away, of course sounding like a NASCAR track. We were the race cars and it worked for a while but I'm not sure what happened - maybe they just got older because that game wasn't working anymore (even with the recent Cars movie and calling ourselves Lighting McQueen).
Well, I tried the Flylady way - setting the timer and trying to finish before it went off (even making up elaborate conditions of what would happen to the world if our house was sucked up by the gooey green goblin monsters if we didn't get it done). They didn't buy it, nor did the house get picked up 
.
My most recent attempts has thus far done the trick. A few days ago, I calmly and quietly, called them to me and asked them to show me their hands. I think they were expecting me to rant that a tornado had hit our house and that they were doomed for eternity to suffer the indignation of cleaning and scrubbing until their hands were raw and shriveled but I then asked them to place 2 things in their hands that were out of place and put them away.
"Any two things?"
"What sort of things?"
"Can it be trash?"
"Do these two pencils count?"
"YES - any two things! Look, see, I have already put away 2 things, uh 3 and now 4! Yes, trash counts -5".
Well, I think the competitiveness got to them and they started calling out numbers of things that they were putting away and I didn't instigate anything, but just kept calling out numbers. I didn't even mind when they were counting each of the pine needles that had fallen off the Christmas tree onto the carpet. 
They were running around looking and finding just as many things as they could put away and even came to me when they ran out of ideas to put away. It was a hoot and took all of 15 minutes for each of us to get our count into the hundreds and for our house to get straightened out.
Well today, my oldest ds looks around and says we need to play that "pick up game" again (woo hoo - he noticed the house needed it!!) however, I didn't really want to play and my middle ds didn't want to play at all. He ignores us and starts, joined by his little brother and the guilt sets in with me when they hit "17" so I start picking up too. The three of us are going at it, now in the hundreds and from the bedroom out of the blue, we hear "ONE" from my middle ds who didn't want to play! It was so hysterical we all just cracked up and he caught up to the rest of us in no time flat.
Just thought I'd share what is working for us at the moment.
PS The boys taught dad how to play the game this evening. DH didn't want to play but ended up having fun too.
