50 Pennies (Spring Break Day #1)

I am all about natural consequences. So, my rule is that the kids can have their room messy, as long as there is a path clear to the bed.

However, they also get to "live" in that room. As in, they can't play in the living room when their room is a mess.

I'm so hoping that (in time) they will see that our home is a happier, more FUN place when it's clean.

My method usually works just fine.

It gets messy, they don't have room to play, they clean it, and then they tell me, "We love our room so much more when it's clean! It's so nice to play in now!"

It makes my heart go pitter-patter.

Over the weekend, a tornado or a tsunami or something happened.

And this resulted.



Ugh. Three kids in a small room on a Sunday is just a recipe for a mess.

My plan was to get the house CLEAN on the first day of spring break, and as much as I knew I should do the natural consequence thing, I couldn't.

SO.

I hid 50 pennies under all that mess.

And they had a blast looking for the pennies as they cleaned.

All morning I heard things like, "Mom give us a hint!"

Then I would say something like, "Try dusting your bookshelves."

Awesome.

They found the pennies, gave them back (because, hello!, I need my 50 cents), and we proceeded to have a fun day with a clean house.