A Great Teaching Opportunity

Today was a prime opportunity to take the morning off from school for a practical lesson on idols, spending our time wisely and setting priorities.

Now, let me say, I am not talking about the kinds of idols that compete for your attention on TV nor the ones that were made of wood and worshiped by civilizations of old. No, I am talking about the things of this modern age which take our focus away from the things of God.

Idols cam come in the form of anything from too much TV or computer time, too much emphasis on sports or in our case, too much STUFF!

This morning I was looking around the house realizing that not only were behind on some much needed daily cleaning tasks, we also were beginning to suffer from a case of "stuff-itis". A.K.A. clutter and junk that needed tossing. I made a note to myself to tackle this mess over the next several days but my main objective today was to get the girls bedroom done and get them in the proper mindset to be on board with me on this cleaning mission.

I began by telling them that the mess in their room was not acceptable. Our oldest two are very good at cleaning and really know better than to shove things under the bed or in the closet instead of tossing them or putting them away (which is what I found today). I reminded them of what then need to do when they do clean up. I went on to explain that if we own to many things or fail to toss our trash out, we are creating an idol for ourselves because we will be spending way too much time on managing our mess than on the things of God. I also told them that my job as their mom is to train them how to manage their things and we then went on to start the cleaning project together.

I accepted no arguments on why they wanted to keep any particular item. I decided what to keep and what to toss. They quickly were on board with me and happily tossing things that were honestly just trash and needed to go.

The room is now looking much better and the girls are happy that they now won't be wasting their time on sorting and managing all the things we threw away.

My husband and I area also planning to have a family meeting with the girls this weekend. We are going to discuss these things in more depth as well as setting some new guidelines on the things we will be keeping or bringing into our home. We really purpose to keep "things" to a minimum around here as to have a better learning environment and more time on our hands to serve others and spend our time on things that honor God.