The "Bentz Experiment" is About to Begin!

I've gotten quite tired of the state of our home,  especially the disaster zone   , I mean children's bedrooms.

We have 8 children - the 4 boys all share a room, and the girls are split into 2 room with 2 girls each.  We keep most of our toys in another disaster zone... I mean, toy closet (a large storage closet).  With the toys in there, I can shut the door and ignore.

My problem is - their beds are rarely, if ever made,  toys and books are everywhere, and you don't even want to get me started on the laundry issues!

I'm finally getting to the point... something has to change.  I'm simply not training them in this area, but in my defense, it was a tough year.  I would hate to send them off to future spouses in this condition.

Last year I read a really convicting book - Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her House of Youth Entitlement by  Kay Wills Wyma  - This is NOT a book review - it's the beginning of the "Bentz Experiment".

This mom decided to be systematic and intentional  in training her children in several key areas.    I've taken some inspiration and came up with our own "Bentz Experiment".  Here we go...

January we will focus on Bedrooms.  Here are the goals for the team:

• a made bed (not perfect, lumps are allowed - just make a decent attempt)
• nothing on the floor (NOTHING!)
• clothing put away, and drawers actually shut

See, I'm not a cleaning freak, I just want a little neatness, order, and their future spouses to be happy.  Martha Stewart would never last in my world.

To help motivate the team,   here is the Reward System,which has to be super simple to actually be enforced...

Each child will get 30 dimes in their bucket at the beginning of the month.  .  The author of the book used dollars, but - she has way less kiddos than me!

Everyday, an unannounced inspection will randomly take place. Hopefully to encourage the making of bed and cleaning of room all the time - not just when "warned".   If the 3 goals have been met - the roommates keep their dimes. If not, I simply remove a dime.  At the end of the month, whatever they have in their basket - is theirs to keep.  I found these cute metal baskets in the dollar section at Target....

  I'll report back at the end of the month...  so far - they are keeping more dimes than they have lost.

I like it, it just may work!