Book Review: Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma

Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement by Kay Wills Wyma
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me some time to read this because I originally borrowed this book from the public library and then didn't get a chance to read it. Every time I went back to borrow t again it was either reserved or checked out! Glad I came back to reading it because it is filled with humor and many truths about today's youth feeling entitled.

The 'Experiment' focuses on one life learning area per month, making this a year long endeavor. At first I thought this may be 'b-o-r-i-n-g' to read about, but Mrs. Wyma writes with humor and I could totally relate to her children's attitudes.

The focus areas include the following life lessons: Beds and Clutter, Cooking (menu planning, shopping & washing dishes), The Outdoors (weeding, planting), Working/Employment, Domestic Dirty Jobs (think bathrooms), Laundry, Handyman/DIY, Party Planning/Hospitality, Teamwork, Errands, Service For Others, and Manners.

By looking at that list of twelve areas you may think 'that's all common sense'. I kind of thought that too, but then thought about some of the things my kids do or say. If your children don't have to do certain tasks, what makes you think that they're intently watching you do said task so they know how to do it? Chances are they're not watching you intently and they don't know how to do said task. You will see that clearly when you read this book, as well as paying more attention to the little things in your child's own daily life.

I have tried little experiments with my kids throughout this book (lunch packing, loading/unloading the dishwasher, cleaning up after a meal, etc.) I can tell you this, my kids need to learn to do more for themselves and this book was a great jump start for me to teach more daily life lessons.

I did not know that Mrs. Wyma started a blog before she got this book deal. I will be going back to look at past entries from her blog, as well as keeping up with her present entries. You can find her at www.theMOATblog.com. Keep teaching your children; they are our future!

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2 comments

Posted at 11:58 AM  |  by Elle

Happy Easter!

I hope my readers that celebrate Easter had a wonderful day with family and friends.

Em woke me up at 7:40am and asked if she could go through her Easter basket.  I told her "sure", as I groggily woke up.  (This kid hasn't slept past 8am since she's had off from school last Thursday!  Funny, because I cannot pry her out of bed until around 8:15am on a school day!)  So Em proceeded to Kaye's room to wake her up.  I, of course, could not gall back to sleep.  So I watched them oogle over their Easter baskets for a bit and then I decided to fire up my laptop (which was returned to me all fixed yesterday----a registry error was the culprit and my hubby's co-worker backed all my files up, so I didn't lose anything but a lot of settings/programs I had installed.)  Then we had breakfast and started to get dressed for church, which started at 11am.  After church we headed back home for a bit then it was off to my parents house for dinner at 1pm.

The girls had a great time playing with their cousins and I enjoyed talking with my sisters, who I barely get to see.  We got home around 4:50pm and had a light dinner.  The kids were whooped!  Kaye fell asleep watching TV around 8:30pm and Em came to me at 9:30pm telling me she was ready for bed!  I'm tired, but I think I will do some reading before I turn in tonight. 

Hopefully, I will be back to blog tomorrow and have more of my laptop back to the way it was!

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Posted at 10:12 PM  |  by Lisa E.