Mom Tip: “The Bag”

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We’ve had our house on the market for the last several weeks and because of this it’s important that things stay spotless so we can dash out when a realtor calls. I don’t usually care so much that the house is gleaming – tidy is nice – but we’re in a tough area for selling right now and can use any help we can get!

Anyway, keeping things clean is easy to do when I’m the only one home. But when the girls walk in the door from school there’s suddenly stuff just everywhere – backpacks, shoes, homework, random papers, wrappers, pencils, hair bands – you get the idea. I’ve tried to keep a close eye on them as they unload from their day and I swear, the stuff just materializes.

It’s gotten old riding them about it. They’re usually pretty good about putting their things away when they’ve had a chance to settle in but I’ve figured that putting things away immediately will help save some time and maybe keep everything else from just deteriorating into “I’ll take care of that later” mode.

So on Friday I went out to the garage and brought a garbage bag inside. Just a regular 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag. I told the girls they had five minutes to pick up everything that belonged to them and put them away in the correct places or else it was going in The Bag.

You should have seen them start hopping. I also made sure to tell them that the bag’s domain wasn’t limited to just the family room and that we’d be heading to their bedrooms too to make sure they weren’t just moving piles of stuff around from one room to another.

So what’s the point of the bag? As I explained to the girls, anything left behind goes in. I didn’t care of it’s shoes, toys, homework or clothes – if they leave it out it’s going in. However, this trash bag isn’t going in the trash. I designated a spot in the laundry room up on a shelf as the new home of the bag, and the girls have to earn their items if they want it back. This can consist of anything from doing an extra chore to picking something up without me asking them to (they get one warning before the bag comes out).

So far, Friday is the only day we’ve had to use the bag! All weekend they managed to keep on top of it, even mentioning that they didn’t want this doll or that toy ending up in the bag.

Now, this isn’t something I came up with on my own. My stepmom tried to use it on all of us kids when I was much younger, but it wasn’t enforced so it didn’t work, which is probably why I didn’t think to try it out for myself sooner. But so far, so good!

Have you ever tried using the bag or a similar stay-clean method?