The Time Out Bag

Our children love to get things out to play with, but they do not love to put things away. Matt & I are hoping the new system we learned of and have started this evening will get our children into the habit of putting their things where they belong. We now have a time out bag (a kitchen sized garbage bag). Anything we find in a place where it doesn't belong, we put it into the time out bag. The kids need to pick a slip of paper from an envelope to see what chore they have to do to get an item back from the time out bag. There is one envelope for the older 3 kids and another envelope for the younger 3. Some of the chores are super easy like draw a picture for Jacob who will be on his mission soon to more time consuming chores like vacuuming my car. We gave the kids time to clean up this evening and then Matt went around with the time out bag. He collected about a quarter of a bag full of stuff. Emily immediately wanted to get her mp3 player back. Matt was so happy when she picked the wash the dishes chore. Yay for us! Emily washed the dishes without much complaint (amazing!). Zoe didn't think she would have anything in the bag, but her ipod charger wasn't put away. She had to work on her Personal Progress for 15 minutes. Speaking of Zoe and Personal Progress, she bore her testimony about the Atonement in Sacrament Meeting today for one of her goals. She was super nervous, but she did it! Back to the chores...Zach & Noah liked doing the chores and they enjoyed getting their sisters' things out of the time out bag for them. So sweet! The only thing I didn't like was doing all this work on Sunday. I think from now on, the kids will wait until Monday to earn back what went into the time out bag on Sunday.