Welcome to the MOMMY STORE.

Holy cow, I've got expensive maids !!! But alas, I have some maids to clean my house. I think I might pay way too much!! I paid out like $12.00 to have my 10 year old scrub the kitchen floor. Crazy thing is she usually complains about this type of thing, but not this time. She actually told me afterwards, that it was FUN!! What work can be Fun?? She must be crazy. Right?

Well, I also paid my nearly 7 year old $3.00 for putting away the dishes through out the day that got stacked in the drain rack. And I paid $5.00 to my 9 year old for cleaning the toilet inside and out. They've been really eager lately to do chores. Hmmm. Wonder why??



BUT

I'm not paying them real money. I came up with "MOMMY MONEY".
I figured that at school they have a school store and get " school" money to use at the school store for doing good things, such as helping out in class, doing homework and turning it in, being kind, following the dress code. And my kids are motivated to be and do good while at school. So..... that got me thinking that I need help around the house, and I need to make it worth their effort. So I assign a task and say that they can earn xxx amount of mommy money for doing it quickly and all the way. But on the other hand, when I hear arguing, or someone being mean, they owe me money. So once a week I hold a store, and have picked up various items (whatever I can acquire without costing me a lot of money) and then put a price on it.

This last week, I decided to get a box of skittles that have the two colors/flavors inside one skittle, and put the price of $60.00 on it. No one had enough last week, but we've had busy busy workers going around, doing jobs to earn the money.

Why on earth did I not think of this earlier?

So I've come up with chores that need to be done, and just try and assign those chores throughout the week, so that everything gets done, and I'm not the ONLY one cleaning up anymore. Just like MAGIC!!!

So here's pictures from the first store we did,






Actually in the above picture, I had collected things that I had asked and waited about 10 minutes before I acted, and placed in a bag and told them they could have a chance to buy them back at the store. They haven't left anything out really since then, that hasn't been put away after being asked. Seriously this is AWESOME!!!

And the absolute number one rule I use.... they don't get money for it if they whine at all. They want their money so they do a good job with not whining.

But don't think for a minute that these little people are perfect... because they aren't. But now I can just take away the money when they misbehave. I love it. I kind of owe the idea to my sister in law too. I was already thinking about doing something like this for the last few years, but just didn't know how I should go about it, and got some good ideas from her.

So we both, do the store once a week. Why? To keep the kids motivated to be good and do their chores and other various things.

And whoever has the most money gets to "shop" first. Why? Well, they worked the hardest or have been saving up for a little while and it just seems fair. And then they can have first pick of what they want.

And we try to have new stuff each week that wasn't there the first week, and keep the prizes interesting. Although with school quickly approaching, keeping pencils on hand seems to be a great idea.