love me a big brother

I've been working furiously in my garage today, trying to clean out and get ready for a tag sale all at the same time.  (How does so much "stuff" accumulate in such a short period of time)??  As I was sorting and creating new piles I thought of a lesson I learned in childhood, compliments of my older brother.  My parents had assigned all four of us (children) the task of cleaning up the yard after a windstorm or tree trimming event??  Not sure what happened anymore ~ I just remember tons & tons of branches strewn all over the place.  We were supposed to cut them down into wood piles, kindling piles, etc.  I also remember standing in the middle of the mess thinking we were never, EVER, in our whole entire lives, going to finish this chore and get to play again.  We might have been 10, 8, 6 & 4 yrs of age at the time??  Anyway (here's where the lesson occurred), in a flash of brillance, our older brother directed us to haul all the branches into a few big piles.  Once we had done that, it created the effect that we had made tremendous progress and we were showered with praise for working so hard at the dinner table that evening (as much as praise was showered in our family).  I have never forgotten that first exposure to reorganization.  Since that day, I've employed that technique many times with the same success (probably why I thought of it today) wondering if it might help?!!!  I don't think so (I think it's going to take more than moving stuff around this time) but a belated thank you Joe (he's the one on the left).  I betcha never knew you taught me that!!

Comments

[deb]

You may have just given me a way to motivate my boys when they have a big cleanup type job.

Thanks

Deb

[Cinj]

Ugh! Don't remind me, I've got a garage to clean too! Cheesehead won't allow another garage sale either. I've made lots of trips to Goodwill, looks like I have many more trips to make too.

I think I like that reorganizing idea. I wonder if Cheesehead would think about how hard I've worked tomorrow....

[Kathleen]

lol. try it out and let me know how it goes Cinj. It really has worked for me! Good luck!

[Kathleen]

Wow, thanks Deb!!!