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May/June 2003 Quote of the Month: Time is Money, or a opportunity to clean that room you told your mother you were going to clean last week! -- Benjamin Franklin, revised by Jarrett G. Carter Hi Kids! Sorry we have not been updating this site…most of you might have even memorized the January 2003 article because of how long it has been on the website but we will make a effort to keep you posted. One more thing before we go into the article, our e-mail address (kids@momtime.net) has been contaminated with adult e-mails in our inbox and it is getting frustrating for us. We would like to say this again to all adults “You may not e-mail us. kids@momtime.net is not a option and we have reported you if you have e-mailed us.” But we also really want kids to e-mail us. And Now Our Article…
THE PURPOSE OF A ROOM 1 Summary: This article will focus on families with eat-in kitchens and dining rooms but even families with small kitchens should still read this because the beginning of a article focuses on the purpose of any room. Today is a topic that we think needs to get around…purposes of a room, now there are several reasons why a room can always get messy like a lack of space, a lack of time to clean the room but the most likely reason is because your room has too many purposes. So the solution would be to make and design a purpose(s) for the room/space and make sure that the only thing that is going on is what you want to happen in that room. Write down the purpose on a grid. A grid is usually a good idea when it comes to making purposes for your house. But there is a catch; in other words you don’t get something for nothing… the parents! You need to discuss what you are doing and get them involved-after all they are the ones who tell you to clean your room right? Here is a sample grid
Notice that even the small things are recorded so suppose you see a chart like this:
Whoa! You have way too many things going on in that kitchen. Can you cut down on the purposes in that room? Now here is a way to cut down the purposes (the boldface letters stand for former kitchen purposes.)
The technique that is used is a simple one, most big families have a eat-in kitchen (EIK) so it is easy to bring more and more things into the kitchen which makes a bond between you and the kitchen and this one thing we can not over emphasize that usually makes kitchen and dining room tables messy, “A KITCHEN OR DINING ROOM TABLE IS NOT A DESK!” Now if you have a system that will keep it from getting messy then that is a different story. But back to the beginning of this paragraph I was talking about the importance of limiting the things that come into a room so the outcome is that you are limiting the activities going into that room/space. Also what I was saying about EIK’s is that you need to develop a system to keep it clean because those are the kind of rooms in a house that gets messy. Now if you ask us if we have had any experience with EIK’s we would have to say no since we have a really small kitchen but our experience comes from our grandparent’s house, they have a EIK and it is never messy even when we come to their house by surprise it is spit-spot clean. Yet if we graphed their activities on a grid it would be a lot to write but do you want me to let you in on their secret? ‘You sure? Okay, what they do is they have a bin and since they only read magazines at their table they have a magazine box so when my dad wants to borrow a magazine they go straight to the magazine box and get the one he wants. That’s a good method, suppose you are always finding schoolbooks on your kitchen table, make a schoolbook box. If your freezer is always overflowing buy a storage freezer. In the July/August 2003 Article I will do part 2 of this article that will talk about the purpose of a bedroom but until then have a good month! ©Copyright April 2003, By Jarrett G. Carter. This article may not be used in any form without permission of Jarrett G. Carter. For permission please contact Jarrett G. Carter at kids@momtime.net. View more newsletters ...
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