Boogie Bag

For Christmas my sister in law got me A Mother's Book of Secrets (click to see). Earlier in the year I commented on how much I wanted to read a good book with ideas on how to become a better Mother and on how to help my children learn all the things they need to. Well she remembered and got me this amazing book.


It has so many good ideas in it.


I want to try all of them out.

However, that is somewhat over whelming so I've decided to start with one and then move to the next.

The first idea that I chose was to get a "Boogie Bag" for my kids. It is simply a pillowcase with a face drawn on it.

I have been so frustrated with just how many toys my 2 little boys manage to drag out of their room, into the living room and then leave them there, only to return with more toys.

By bedtime I'm so tired of asking my kids to clean up that I am really grouchy and I end up doing all of the cleaning. I hate putting my kids to bed, when I'm grouchy. I don't want their last thoughts before going to sleep being ones that wonder why I'm so grouchy, or ones that make them sad.

So we have beed doing the Boogie Bag before bed for 3 weeks now and I must say that the first few nights were rough.

Kaysen would scream, "I don't want it to go in the Boogie Bag!"

Which left me saying, "Then pick it up and it won't go in there" about a 247 times.

Gage on the other hand, didn't really care. That is, until his beloved shape blocks got put in there one night. He thought he'd get them back the next morning.

Nope. They stay in the bag for a week. Actually, by the time the week rolls around my kids have forgotten what toys are in the bag and its like Christmas all over again when they get them back.

Now, every night before bed Kaysen reminds me that it is Boogie Bag time and he's so excited when he sees that none of his toys have to go in the Boogie Bag. And he let's me know if we accidently missed one the next morning and puts it in the bag himself.

It has been so much easier to get my boys to do it on their own. (without me picking all of them up because they don't do it.) And mostly, without me yelling at them the whole time to do it.

This one littel idea has made our bedtime routine much much more enjoyable.

I will be trying out of the many ideas that are in this book and documenting them on my blog. I'm hoping that each one really does make me better at my "job" :)