We have tons of rules at our house. I tend not to remember a lot of them because I ignore a lot of them. :-) If I want to remember a rule, I ask a kid. One of the younger 2 kids because the oldest tends to ignore and/or claim ignorance of a lot of them too.
One of the main rules is for screentime. The various screens in our house, which include TV (2), computers (4), gameboys (3) can only come on from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. so basically, when Mom is working. This has worked well for us for a year or so, much better than any of the previous schemes and plans that I came up with. This way, they leave me alone when I'm working and their screentime is limited in a way I can easily keep track of. If they miss a couple hours because we're at the skating rink, there are no makeups. They also get screentime on Saturday morning before noon because my youngest loves Saturday morning cartoons. Right now due to the TV issues we are having (no channels at all!), I've been taking him to Grandma and Grandaddy's house for the last 3 weeks every Saturday.
I realise that this amount of screentime is more than the 'experts" recommend, but I also realise that my kids don't actually get the maximum every week. We skate, we go to parties, youth groups, etc. and also sometimes they all want the same screen so they have to wait. At other times, they get interested in something else, forget about the screens and go do the other thing. This week, since we've been reading Ranger's Apprentice, they've been interested in shooting bows and arrows, so they've been doing a lot of that, quite a bit of it during screen time. Of course, there are bow and arrow rules too, no one can shoot unless the other 2 kids are in the house. They watch each other and cheer for each other, through the living room windows.
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