Tuesday, November 12, 2013

3 Recent Brilliant Helpful Ideas

Brilliant Idea #1
After trick-or-treating, any time your kids start to fight with each other, talk back to you, or "forget" to do something they've been told, you don't have to say a thing! Just walk over to their candy bag/bowl/pile and start eating. Do this each time and it will either cut down on fighting, talking back, and "forgetting", or, since you have to suffer, you can do it while eating something delicious!

Brilliant Idea #2
When the children come out of their rooms after the bedtime routine (brushing teeth, using the potty, getting on pajamas, reading stories, saying GOOD NIGHT), we have been giving them extra chores to do, but this has lost effectiveness with the older boys. So, lately, when the 11 year old or 14 year old boy comes out after bedtime, Husband escorts him back to his room and gives him an earnest, informative speech about something necessary, but generally awkward to bring up, like puberty! Or the birds and the bees! Or girls!

GENIUS.

Brilliant Idea #3
It took ONE TIME of every child getting on winter gear to go outside and play in the snow and then returning to the house and leaving a trail of wet winter gear in their wake for me to lose my mind decide that Something had to be done.

Meet Something:

This lovely over-the-door, wire shoe organizer may be purchased at T@rget for about $16 or delivered right to your door from Amazon for about $20.
It was assembled with minimal swearing effort on my part. (I suggest hanging it and THEN attaching the shoe holder things.)

MUCH. BETTER.

*fist pump*

7 comments:

Swistle said...

Ha ha, I particularly like the Earnest Talk one! I am also eyeing the over-door rack, because GLOVES EVERYWHERE ALREADY AND IT IS STILL AUTUMN.

april said...

Yes, number two is awesome. Unfortunately doesn't work on a three year old which is the only one I have a problem with that way. Tonight I was certain he was going to give himself a hernia since he came out four times to pee. Don't push that hard, child!

momof3 said...

Your ideas are brilliant!

Curly Girl said...

I needed an excuse to go peruse my local Tarjay, so thanks for the BRILLIANT idea. I saw on pintere$t once where you take towel bars, attach to doors, adn use clips, but SO MUCH WORK. This seems much easier.

Kenner said...

AHAHAHAHAHA, we don't have snow so the last one isn't as helpful to me, but the first two were PRICELESS (and I'd definitely never heard of them before!) I just hope I remember them for a time in the future when it will be needed ;)

Audrey said...

The shoe holder repurposed as glove holder? GENIUS. Seriously. I can't even keep track of the adults' gloves in this house. You are so smart.

Emily said...

Oh brilliant ideas #1 and #2 are awesome. And I had never thought of giving extra chores for getting out of bed inappropriately - I think that might be a most enjoyable tactic to use with my seven and four year olds.

I am a big fan of over the door things. I have an over the door shoe holder (it has pockets for the shoes) in our hall closet which we converted to a toy and game closet (Husband put in floor to ceiling shelves). I use the "shoe" holder to hold bags of small items (for example: bag of checkers, bag of farm magnet toys, bag of finger puppets, etc.). It is fantastic for organizing smallish items!

And I have often thought that I am very spoiled living here in southern CA with the kids. I think I would quickly go batshit crazy with all the winter gear lying about (and having to wrangle the baby into it).