Harvie Dollars

Messy rooms became pretty common at our house, much to my dismay. To help matters at the beginning, I set up the expectation that beds be made before breakfast any day of the week. Then, we took away laundry baskets for a couple of weeks and made the kids walk all their clothes across the house to the laundry room. Sadly, when they got the laundry baskets back, instead of learning to think about putting their clothes in the basket, they went back to their old habits. Argh.

Then, one day, I was thinking about what motivates these two kiddos and realized I had the answer: fake money.

Weird. But true!

In his class at school, B get DRDs (Diamond Ridge Dollars) as rewards from his teacher for things. These simple paper dollars with the face of his teachers (he's in a 5/6th grade split class that does everything with the 6th graders) have become valuable at school with kids trading pencils and things for these colored paper rectangles. I mentioned this to Hubby and told him that if the kids are motivated by fake money, why shouldn't we jump on this bandwagon?!

I scanned a dollar from a board game, changed some elements of it, like adding in a picture of each kid as the center face, and viola! Harvie Dollars were born.


I found a clean room checklist (http://moneysavingmom.com/2013/10/free-printable-checklist-getting-kids-to-clean-their-rooms.html) I printed and laminated.

Now, everyday, the kids know exactly what to do to their rooms to earn their "money"-- up to $8/day (one for each item). Since the day I introduced the chart  and the money with the three kids' faces on them, we haven't had to remind either child to straighten up their rooms and they have even dusted the whole house --before school-- in order to earn an extra dollar!

On Friday, we have our "Harvie Store" where we have things we know the kids like (pencils, erasers, cans of pop, jump rope, Suduko book, candy) and they trade their money in. We bought some big ticket items (a book for B and a little Lego friends set for H) that cost $100 that they can save up for (we keep track of money they put in "savings"). We also have privileges they can buy, like getting out of dishes one night after dinner or time to play on a tablet or choosing a movie for Friday night. Since we usually do a treat Friday night, they can also pay to upgrade a treat, like caramel popcorn instead of butter popcorn.

Everyday I inspect the rooms and put their money on their beds. It's so funny when they get together to "trade" their dollars. One of the funniest things I've heard was: "Wait! I have too many of you. I want more of Paige. I'll trade you."

Just yesterday the kids were saying that cleaning their rooms is pretty easy now and that if they just do a little maintenance each day, they keep getting dollars. They don't dust everyday. They don't vacuum everyday. They don't empty their trash everyday. But they do make their beds (or no breakfast!) and pretty much keep the floor neat and seem to enjoy being in their rooms more than they did before! Score!