Tidy Kidz wants to hear from YOU! What are your major household issues when it comes to kids? Throwing clothes on the floor, not cleaning up the dishes, forgetting to feed the dog, leaving drinks and trash in the backseat of the newly cleaned car? Having a little help addressing these types of things can go a long way for the harmony of the entire family. You can leave a reply or email us @ tidykidz@gmail.com. Let Tidy Kidz help!
We're Listening!!
I don’t know about anyone else out there but school hasn’t even started yet and I’m already starting to shudder at the thought of all that schoolwork flooding in my door and onto the kitchen table and every other flat surface in the house. I love to see the progress my 3 little geniuses are making in school but that coupled with the mail can quickly become a literal paper mountain. We have trays set up for the kids to minimize the scatter during the week and it works like a charm. “Scan-Man” takes us one step closer to spacial bliss 
I have decided to start the “Scan-Man” up and get him rockin’ this year. Each of us will have a folder on the computer for any papers we want to keep around but don’t necessarily need to have a physical copy handy. Scanners are relatively inexpensive and you may want to pick up a paper shredder while you’re at it since you won’t need to FILE it anymore. I get all fired up just typing that line There will be plenty of sales coming up with school starting so keep your eye open for deals. We’ll certainly post any we find!
Change is good!
Take a moment to think about how much paper storage you have in your house right now…. all of it… even in the attic! This is 2009…make the change to storing it on the computer and free up some much needed space around the house. Of course you will need to hang on to some precious items – don’t go scanning and shredding little Johnnie’s kindergarten art project.
Can you feel the open space?
TKMom
Space to moooove
OK, let’s get down to brass tacks here everyone. Some things just never change and this particular issue is no different. You CANNOT expect your little people to keep there rooms picked up if your room looks like a set for the show Clean House (prior to the clean part). You may get lucky a time ot two but ultimately our kids do what we do, not what we say. Go ahead, argue with yourself… we’ll wait :-O :-# :-! ;-] :-{)
Great! So glad you are back and hopefully you have reached your senses and understand that “monkey see, monkey do” is more than just a quaint phrase. We have all watched our kids emulate grown-up behavior and it’s no accident that children of all ages, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, religions and on – all do it! It’s UNIVERSAL! They will emulate the good AND the bad no matter how much we try to tell them what to do and how to do it – they are WATCHING!
Let’s have a little therapy session, shall we ? (purple is a nice soothing color, right?)
So ask yourself this question, “Am I doing the things I am asking of my kids?” I know, that was not nice was it?! Depending on your answer, you are feeling somewhere between the June Cleaver type and the Tazmanian Devil. If you are June Cleaver you may be thinking all is well with the world. I’m not really concerned about offending any Junes out there because Junes are doing all the work themselves and probably aren’t reading this blog anyway. As for the Tazs, you know who you are(admit it) and chances are you already feel bad enough about the state of your stuff, so let me approach this from somewhere around the Malcolm in the Middle area.
You GOTTA do it! Here are a few tips to get you started 
Make a chart, or get in touch with your inner child and use one of ours (major points with the kids). Use it to make sure you pay at least 5 minutes of attention to your room everyday. I can say from experience, 5 minutes a day is all you really need to keep your room from becoming the very thing your sweet little person uses against you when you ask them to clean theirs!
This is a fun way to get kids started cleaning up in any super messy room-ADVENTURE STYLE! Ideally this works best with more than one mate but if all the others have walked the plank and one mate is all that’s left then so be it! (As long as the one mate left isn’t you, then this would just be weird)
Take a big piece of paper and put a giant red X on it. This X goes on the floor in the middle of the room and an unknown reward written on a small piece of paper goes underneath (don’t let them see this part). The reward should be something of particular interest to the mates involved in the adventure (this promotes auto-participation in the next adventure, of which there will surely be one). Everyone gets to pick a pirate name of course and they must speak in their best pirate voices throughout the entire adventure. If they have pirate dress-up clothes – by all means let them dress for the occasion!
All of the items around the ship(room) that are causing the ship’s deck to be a wreck are picked up and placed on the big red X. I mean everything from the clothes to stuffed animals to coloring books and so on gets piled on this X. Once the pile is complete – the mates look around the room and put away any remaining debris hanging around.
Now it’s time to get to the bottom of the pile and find out what is under that big red X! This is when you let the mates know there is treasure under that red X and they can’t see what it is until all the items in the pile are put in their proper place and the red X can be lifted. They will be scooting around the room like little deckhands in a hurry. If you have any pirate songs on CD play those too!
Side note: make sure the reward is something that can be redeemed fairly quickly after the task has been completed. Not trying to promote instant gratification but for this tip – the quicker the better on the reward end. Total prep time is about 4 minutes to get this rolling.
This little gem also works well with a cowboy theme -YEEHAAA MATES!
TKMate
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