Confessions of a reformed slob
Mary Lou Aguirre wrote a nice column today in the Life section on former Fresnan Pam Young's ingenious system for getting kids to keep their rooms clean. Pam has a talent for making everything fun, even cleaning the Legos out of the carpet.
Pam and I have known each other for more than 25 years, since she and her sister, Peggy, first started her amazingly successful "Side-Tracked Home Executives" system. Their book launched a whole industry by the Slob Sisters. There are all kinds of books, planners, CDs, DVDs and software for sale. Perhaps you are familiar with one of her devotees, the Flylady, who gets millions of hits on her Web site every year.
Pam and Peggy were actually the precursors to those TV series like "Clean Sweep" and "Mission Organization," where organizers go in and redesign someone's cluttered home or office. (You may remember Pam and Peggy redid Greg and Marlene Stephens' house in Fresno.) The difference between these shows and Pam and Peggy is that the sisters realized that if you don't teach disorganized people how to change their daily habits, those offices or garages will be a mess again in two weeks.
Besides the House Fairy for kids, Pam told me about a new project that's about adults. If you're like most Americans, with a house or desk less organized than it should be, less money piled up in a savings account than we would like and more credit cards than we really need, Pam says it's not our fault. It's the fault of our inner brat, splurging on unnecessary stuff and not sticking to routines that keep things and moneyunder control. She discovered this the hard way -- when she got further into credit card debt than she wanted to be. Pam had a publisher who was interested in having her collatorate on a book on organizing finances. Pam's nothing if not completely down-to-earth, and she knew she could not pass herself off to her audience as an expert on money until she got her own act together.
So, she read all the books by the popular gurus and decided the advice was just common sense and they were all pretty much saying the same thing. Pay yourself first, make a budget and stick to it, pay off your credit cards every month, and blah blah. Well, duh. And what is fun about that? Nothing.
The answer is really deeper, she decided, and her playful imagination went to work. The finances are being messed up by an inner brat who makes poor decisions. She named her inner brat Nelly, after that mean girl in the series "Little House on the Prairie." You can call yours anything you want -- like maybe Eddie, after Eddie Haskell in "Leave it to Beaver," or Darth Vader if you're a Star Wars fan -- some villain you can have fun with. She started sorting out Nelly in her thought patterns, "You don't want to cook dinner today. Let's eat out. You deserve that." You know how it works. Before you know it, those $80 restaurant dinners add up.
So now she's got this Web site called www.thebratfactor.com and it's all about taming that brat who's messing up your house and office and charging things you don't need. The motto on the business card is, "If it isn't fun, it won't get done!"
If you struggle or know others who do. Check it out.
To read Mary Lou's column, click here.
To see The Brat Factor Web site, click here.
To see the Flylady Web site, click here.
To see the Side-Tracked Home Executives Web site, click here.
Comments
I think I'll name mine Hillary!
Posted by: Brian Murray | October 23, 2007 8:10 PM
Please tell me how to get my daughter out of the mode of saying she likes her room messy and unorganized AND ITS MY ROOM. I tell her I don't and her room is in my house.
Posted by: Jackie Krage | October 24, 2007 11:02 AM
Jackie, I know your daughter. Good luck debating her on anything! That kid is good. I wish you well!
Actually, I like Bill Cosby's humorous approach on "The Cosby Show", which is very similar to yours. It's basically this: Kid, you don't have a room. I'm Dad; I have a job and a house with lots of rooms. I'm generously letting you use one of the rooms in my house while you grow up. When you grow up and get a job, then you can buy a house, too. Then you'll have a room you can keep as messy as you want.
One author I read when my son was little had six children. Her name is Daryl Hoole and she wrote "The Art of Homemaking" and "The Art of Teaching Children." Her experience is that it takes two minutes for kids to clean their rooms before breakfast and two hours after breakfast. Her kids didn't go to school and didn't eat breakfast until the rooms were clean. She found that it goes really fast that way, especially if they smell something delicious cooking in the kitchen.
Once on a really busy day, one of her kids went off to school without making the bed. When she discovered what happened, she went to school, got the child, brought him home to make his bed, then took him back to school. She says you usually only have to do that once to make a big impression. Habits were really important to her.
Posted by: Gail Marshall | October 24, 2007 11:52 AM