Thank you for purchasing the Mama's LIttle Helper Program. This guide is designed to help you understand how the program is laid out and to provide suggestions on how to walk through the program with your children.
Not to brag, but I’ve got 12 grandchildren, and I’ve spent a lot of time with kids. The truth, when it comes to teaching your children, is that being a good example is the most important ingredient for success. As a writer of get-organized books, I have volumes of correspondence from moms who quit hitting the snooze button and woke up to that truth. There’s a quote in my first book that supports it, “You can’t tell your child to make his bed if you’re still in yours.” With that said, let this program help you too. After all, basics are basics and there’s still a little girl in you who just might’ve missed some of those basics when you were young.
Once your children are familiar with the House Fairy, you’re ready to get to work. This part of the program is critical and depending on the condition of your children’s rooms, it could take you several weeks and maybe several months to streamline them and make them easy for your children to maintain.
If you haven’t already, take photos of your children’s rooms before they get them organized and then again when they are. *You’ll be able to upload those photos to your children’s personal and private page on the House Fairy website. The clean room photos will be put in the House Fairy’s Hall of Clean Rooms. Children love seeing their rooms there and they’ll want to share it with their friends and relatives.
I suggest you and your children view the first six videos to learn how to de-clutter a child’s room and focus on that for all the time you need. (Note: the mother and daughter in those videos, got help from Dad and Brother and the transformation of that room took two months spending a little free time every day.) Please spend as much time as you can to help your children make decisions and make sure neither you nor your children burn out trying to do too much each day.
Mom’s Toolbox is one of the most important and valuable parts to this package. It’s full of PDF files for you to print. You may not want to print them all at once, but at least look at every one of them, so you can see what’s there to help you.
Ultimately, the goal is to set the stage for your children to establish new habits, not to have perfect rooms in a week or even in a month. Use a timer and race against fifteen minute intervals. (In On Your Mark, Get Set….You Know the Rest, the House Fairy talks about racing against a timer.) Take frequent breaks and keep at their rooms until they are streamlined and ready for your children to enjoy.
A good idea as you begin accumulating stuff to go to Goodwill is to leave an empty storage container for your children to fill for the House Fairy to take to give to needy children. (You’ll have to be sure to really get the stuff to Goodwill so the children don’t see it later.) In Mom’s Toolbox there’s a note you can print from the House Fairy thanking the children for the clothes, books and toys,
Now is a good time to print the House Fairy Memo Cards and the House Fairy Chore Chart, and any other tools from the tools box you want to use as your children begin to get with the program.
When you’re ready for Part Three, you will have begun to see some nice changes in your home, because of the House Fairy and I hope by then you’ll be having some great fun playing the House Fairy. This is a good time to introduceThe House Fairy Good Behavior Point Program. You’ll find the instructions along with the Good Behavior Money, a chart to track progress and a letter from the House Fairy to your children explaining how the program works in Mom’s Toolbox. It works best with children seven and older. It’s been very successful with families that have put it into action and I suggest using it as soon as your children have streamlined rooms.
Of course you know clutter creates chaos and the less of it there is, the more peaceful everyone is. The key to success for you and your children is to get rid of stuff that no longer serves you. You can’t organize clutter and keeping stuff (history) just begs for more chaos, unless of course you’re a curator.
Dare to dump it and keep dumping it! Also remember, it took a lot of time to accumulate the stuff you have and if it takes the same amount of time to streamline, so be it. Don’t get discouraged, just keep dumping. Keeping clutter at bay is an on-going challenge in life and it’s your job to help your children with it. I suggest having a basket or some kind of container in each of your children’s rooms for them to put their discards in and once every week or two the contents should be removed and taken to Goodwill. The House Fairy could be the one (which would require a note and a surprise) or once in a while you could just do it as you.
You know how good it feels to really streamline a room and then how easy it is to keep it clean. However, all it takes is an “event” that can start undermining your good work. It’s the same for children. Something as insignificant as a weekend at Grandmas can pull a child out of a routine that was working before the visit. When a routine gets disrupted, the quicker you can get back into it, the better. As you know, you can do a lot of damage in just three days!
Another excellent tool from Mom’s Toolbox is the House Fairy 3x5 Chore Cards. They come with instructions for how to use them and work for children of all ages. There are chore cards with photos of the chores for non-readers and cards with just the written word for those who can read.
As you’ll notice in the videos in Part Three, I mixed entertainment with lessons so every video was not a “teaching” video. Sometime after your children have watched many of the videos, it would be a good idea to leave a note from the House Fairy that thanks your children for watching them. We want them to continue to watch her, and a little reward and nudge will help, in case they start to not want to watch. In fact, remember to praise your children with compliments for even the smallest task. Children thrive on praise. Also don’t forget to thank them liberally for little changes.
About The House Fairy
The House Fairy is the brainchild of New York Times bestselling author Pam Young. A stay-at-home mom of three, stepmother of two and grandmother of 12, Pam has enjoyed most of her life surrounded by happy children of all ages.
With a major in drama (not in college, but in life) Pam has always been able to see with the eyes of a child. Writing a shelf of “self-help” books to inspire disorganized moms, Pam’s focus has always been on solutions to the challenges mothers have in life.
