How to eat an elephant one bite at a time!

That's it! We lost control of the games room again! The toy box is topless, there is more than one box of toys that actually contains what is written on it, it's the BOR-LED! "Ahhh mom! It's way too long! my children sighed when I told them that all the toys in the playroom had to be sorted out in order to put everything in its place and get rid of what is no longer used or what is broken. I understand them, I feel a bit like that when I have to clean kitchen cabinets (among other things the famous "tupperware" cabinet).  It's a long and arduous task! It's disheartening! "Have you ever eaten an elephant?" I asked them. The grown-ups looked at me with their big, bewildered eyes and Simone burst out laughing and said,'"  I added, "Do you know how you eat an elephant? We eat it one bite at a time! That's why we made a game plan for a week.  That's the kind of thing we adults do in our heads when we have a big task to do. But since our children have no access to what's going on in our heads, Les Belles Combines have created a small combination that will allow us to model our method of organization.  Let me explain:

1. Premtake stock of the tasks to be done or assess the size of the elephant to eat.

First, let's write down everything you need to do and then prioritize these tasks. In our case, we decided that it was better to clean up the puzzles and board games at the end, because we might find parts all over the game boxes and toy boxes. Our little deuzans has the unfortunate habit of emptying all the boxes and scattering the rooms all over the house. 2.Second step, split the tasks into several steps or evaluate the number of bites to take to eat our big elephant. Then, let's split the tasks to be done in several steps. As the basement playroom is large and filled with boxes classifying toys, we decided to divide the task into 4 steps. Sorting the disguise box, cleaning the kitchen area, sorting toy boxes on the floor and sorting toy boxes on the shelves.

3.Plan tasks to do over time or make sure to eat our elephant gently so as not to give himself a bad heart.

Doing all this in one day is really too much! In order not to discourage children and keep them well motivated, we decided to plan for a week. So two bites on Monday, two on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, one bite on Thursday and one last on Friday. We then put each task on our family planner in plain sight to remember what to do every day and attacked the elephant.   In the end, the children (and parents) found it much less painful than they thought. It would be a lie to say that it was done without fuss, in joy and joy, but I am sure that they have developed a little more their sense of organization. Then on Friday night, we brought a pizza to reward ourselves! We deserved it!