In my rather large kitchen, we have a Billy Bookshelf from Ikea which was very poorly organized, much like my entire kitchen really. This week really opened my eyes as to how much I had previously focused on my "career" rather than my home and family. So I began to basically take everything out of the cupboards, clean and re-organize, this made space on 3 shelves of the bookshelf, which are perfectly at my daughter's height!
What do you do with this space? As I stood there, staring at my bookshelf attempting to figure out what to do with it, I began to hear my daughter," No Mommy, I can do it myself", "I'm a big girl mommy, I can do it" then I could hear myself cursing every time I tripped over that step stool that would allow her some independence to reach things in the cupboards above the counter.
That is what I came up with, still missing a few baskets but this is the idea around the baskets for her.
The 1st baskets contain, plates, bowls and cups. She now gets herself something to drink and can make her own breakfast every single morning. Aside from a few cleanups, the joy in her face accomplishing this task has been a joy to this mama who really loves to sleep in!
The second one is the snack basket, I don't know how many times, I've asked Ava what she would like for a snack and I always get the same response, " I don't know, what do we have?" Now, I don't have to go through the list any longer, she can see it. I also told her that since it's at her level, I will fill it once a week but if she eats it all really fast, she doesn't get anything else until the weekly fill up date. Once Kindergarten starts in September, she will be responsible for helping pack her lunch by choosing her snacks. This gives her a bit of responsibility and helps me out a bit!
The 3rd basket contains all her crayons, markers, and pencil crayons, that are constantly all over my house, they are now contained and always in the same spot. From this she is learning about cleaning up after herself more, routine and organization.
We've since added a few more baskets from Dollarama, they were $1.25 each and we are still trying to think of what else to fill them with but we will get there. It's only been a week but so far, it's been such a blessing for me and she has been so happy with doing these small things for herself.
Feel free to pass this along to any moms wanting an inexpensive blessing to help with the "no mommy I can do it myself"
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