From Chaos to Control?

"Let me explain--no, let me sum up."

I need to get organized.  Before I go crazy.

I have a wonderful life filled with the best husband ever and 6 wild and crazy kids.  It is these 6 wild and crazy kids however, that started me on the "crazy train" as I like to call it around here.  The pressure has been building to organize our household and yesterday when I walked into the family room and picked up FIVE pairs of socks, FOUR dirty dishes and about A MILLION Nerf darts, I knew action needed to be taken.

Now, before you assume that we live in a den of filth, let me assure you that we don't.  The dishes generally get done every day and the bathrooms are cleaned (almost) every week.  We even vacuum regularly but it's not enough.  I want to raise strong, confident, able bodied kids that look around at an overflowing garbage can and think "maybe I should take that out."  And then actually take it out.

I've been doing some reading and studying recently about how as a society we are actually hurting our children by doing too much for them.  It comes generally from good intentions--we want our children to be happy and to maybe have some of things we didn't have. (My only daughter has 3 Barbie houses because I never got the Barbie Dream House.)  But in our zeal to provide so well for our youth are we actually doing them a disservice? I think maybe we are.

And so, what now?  How do we teach our children to be accountable, resilient and to for heaven's sake PICK UP YOUR SOCKS?  The short answer:  I'm not sure, but I want to start and so I have come up with a game plan of sorts.  I figure that by making it public I'll have some sort of accountability because while I seem to be fantastic at organizing fundraisers, church activities and large events, I am falling short on the home front.  And so here it is--my attempt to take control and more importantly, have my children learn to take control.

THE OBJECTIVE:

Take control of the chaos and teach the kids to be capable in the process.

THE PLAN:

Make a plan.  Seriously--at this point I just know we need to implement change.  I'm still working on how to implement said change.

Yep--there it is people.  My big idea.  Stay posted---big things are coming!