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Then this is the book for you!!  Kay Wills Wyma wrote Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement after realizing one day that she was failing to teach her children to appreciate the finer things in life and instead to expect them.  The dawning of this revelation came the day her teenage son informed her he wanted a Porshe for his 16th birthday.  She came to realize he had no clue what a car like that cost or how hard one had to work to achieve owning something in that price range, so she set out to change her children’s ideals of the world, one challenge at a time.

Kay began by providing her children a jar filled with 31 one dollar bills and a task that had to be completed every day.  If the task wasn’t completed and properly, as she saw fit, the child would lose a dollar for that day.  At the end of the month, whatever was left in the jar was able to be spent as the child wished and hopefully they would learn a valuable skill over the course of the month as they worked to keep every dollar the jar held.

She began this experiment with the simple tasks of making the bed and picking up their rooms every day.  Each month they had to continue with the already learned tasks and learn to do new ones on top of them, from how to cook and clean the kitchen, to laundry and cleaning the bathroom including the toilet and bathtub.  Each child had a different day of the week to complete some tasks while other tasks were required to be done daily.  Every time a task was not completed, the child lost a dollar.

Mom (Kay) was no exception to this.  She created her own jar and participated in the challenge herself.   Yes, she did occasionally lose a dollar as her family worked through the challenges showing her children that even she was not perfect in completing tasks as she was asked.

What did her family learn?  Valuable skills through the year that would last them a lifetime.  Kay now knows she can send her children out into the world and they can survive with clean laundry, a clean home and do simple daily things for themselves.

Want to make changes like this in your family?  The first step to understanding Kay’s logic is to buy her book, Cleaning House, and read it from beginning to end.  Then implement her strategies to fit your family so that when the day comes for your children to leave the nest, they are equipped with lessons they will never forget.

You can find Kay Wills Wyma’s Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement for $14.99 in your local bookstore or online at Amazon.com.  You can read a Sneak Peek of this book at WalterBrook Multnomah.