We even have a name for him: "Robbie Robot"
Sometimes he makes the kids cry with his abruptness, but it's hard to argue with him, ya know?
I set Robbie on my phone for EVERYTHING!
He helps motivate us to clean up our room, or get our homework done, or countdown minutes until the next meal (that one's for Cai;). We set him for disciplinary actions and for picking up sticks around the yard for some extra money. He also counts down between bathtub rotations and toy exchanges, or helps us get faster at our multiplication facts.
You name it, we've timed it.
I have started doing something new though.
I've begun timing myself!
I don't have all day to work on projects, I have 5 little people making sure of that, ha! I do, however, have 10 min. to clean out the refrigerator, or 30 minutes to do a quick clean-up of the misplaced things around the house.
Just today I decided that the weeds had gotten way too out of control. Alethia and Cai were crafting gifts for siblings and Jude had just gone down for a nap. My to-do list had surprisingly dwindled (I'd been setting the timer a lot today) so I grabbed my gardening gloves and set Robbie for 1 hour. It helped to know that I had a specific time frame to work. It motivated me to keep going. I tried to make little goals along the way to see if I could get to "that point" before Robbie went off. If I hadn't have set the timer I probably would've gotten too carried away and worked well into the afternoon, forfeiting homeschooling the littles, playing with them, getting dinner prepared before the 2 older littles got home from school or even getting some other office work done.
If you are having a hard time tackling stuff around your house I'd encourage you to set the timer! Everybody has 10-15 minutes to chip away at a task that continues to hang over your head. You might not get the entire mountain of laundry folded, but you can at least make a mole hill out of it:)
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