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I am a Christian. I am a loving wife to my Army-National-Guard-Recruiter-Husband of 15 years. I am a stay-at-home-mother to our four handsome sons. I am a photographer. My blog is about as erratic, eclectic and random as I am, painted with rainbows of photos and words that are hills and valleys you travel; so lovely sometimes that they hurt you. These are the stories of how far we've come in the last 15 years as Christians, as a family and as individuals.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Not Cool, Bro

I'm not very good at routine. 
Well, let me amend that statement to, I'm not very good at routinely being routine. 
I start strong and fizzle fast.  My longest routine has probably lasted 3 months. But I am no quitter!  I began yet another routine 3 weeks ago and have stuck to it whole heartedly, so far.  One of the items on this routine is to wash/dry/separate/distribute one load of laundry each weekday --you know, to keep up with Mt. Washmore.  My part ends with leaving a neatly stacked pile (eliminates the need for ironing) of clean, dry clothes belonging to the individuals who live here on their respective beds for them to properly put away.  This is not difficult nor is it time consuming.  Yet, this morning while making my rounds, I found this in one of my four son's rooms (who can guess which one?).
As you can see, there are merely two clean shirts that he was expected to hang and put away, but instead he chose to toss them into a bundled mess in a corner.

Since this is a new routine for all of us -and I'm fully aware of how often those change- I will give the boy grace.  This time.
How would you handle this situation?

If the same or in a similar way as I've chosen to, what would you do if it happens again? 

Also, I should let you know that I am a believer in giving those who can, a chance to learn from other's mistakes, so my intentions are to make an example out of this incident and not accept it from anyone else in the future -or for as long as I keep up with this routine ;-)

3 comments:

April Winder said...

I run into this problem on a daily basis with the girls. It drives me crazy. All I ask it that the cothing be hung up or shoved in a drawer that can be closed so I don't have to see the mess and the clothes always end up on the floor, shoved under the bed, in a corner, etc! Recently, I took away all "fun time" to be had until the clothes were properly put away AND I made them work together to MY laundry away PROPERLY before they were allowed to do anything else. If it ended up cutting into their play time...oh well. Also, if they had a bad attitude about it, I would take 15 minutes off of their electronics time every time the attitude came out. However, they were able to earn that time back with a quick attitude adjustment and any extra work I catch them doing without having to be asked. Since we have been sticking to a pretty strict "wake up early" schedule this past week to prepare for the first day of school next week, we have had PLENTY of time to enforce this new rule. I haven't seen any clothes on the floor this week. ; )

Anonymous said...

don't know what to tell you , I can get my child to put things back in there place . lots of luck
love d

Ashley said...

Well, if it were me, I would let them know that I understand it's a pain to put their clothes away but that if they cannot be respectful of the time it takes for me to do their laundry then they will be responsible for their own laundry.