The Take-Away Box

This was my genius when my girl was in her elementary grades.

The idea was born after years of seeing her leave personal things out, night after night. Things like shoes, craft items, coats... I got so tired of hearing my own voice almost nagging, I invented The Take-AWAY Box. If we found one of her belongings laying around once she went to bed, it went into TTAB. Bye-bye!

In order to use the item ever again, she had to purchase the rights back from us. Examples: a pair of shoes not put away? Into the box. Raincoat not hung up? Into the box. Markers not put away? Into the box.

So... how much did we charge? Just 25 cents per item. Bummer for you if we found 12 markers laying on the table.

I clearly remember our girl having to "buy back" her raincoat one day, and that other time when she needed to get back her violin.

It took awhile to get our point across, and I used to rub my hands together and say "Mama needs a mocha!!"

This whole idea only worked when we were faithful in regularly distributing her allowance. At one point, all of it came back to us in the form of a mocha for me (decaf of course).

When she was in middle school, she was perturbed that I had shared this idea with her friend's parents. By then I had taught her about compound interest and the 25 cent ding multiplied big time. The stuff in the box had to be retrieved. If she thought she could just abandon her stuff to the box, well... we had an "app for that" too. It was called donation to Goodwill.

"Mom!! Quit sharing your parenting ideas with my friends' parents!" That was one of my favorite unrequested feedback comments from a girl who is now an awesome adult who manages her life very well.

I fondly look back on that training period and all of those free mochas... and yes, we did this cheerfully and calmly. After all, I got at least one mocha per week...