About two years ago, I bought a lawn mower, if you remember. Since that time, I've been paying back the money I borrowed from the bank to purchase the lawn. The bank makes a lot of money off my desire to mow a lawn. People should be able to earn a living, and the bank has found a niche that enables "it" to earn a living. But they could still make a comfortable living on much less than what I give them.
I've always liked tangible metrics. I would sometimes place MnMs on the piano, one for each song I had to practice, and eat them one at a time after doing the required work. I have a jar I fill with marbles after accomplishing some of my goals (it's about 1/4th full now). Christy and I had a paper chain counting down the days until marriage.
Now, there's a man living in my closet:
Also, we clean our house each week by reading clothes pins.
Each pin represents a job and has a numeric frequency written on it (you do the number 2s every other week.) You clip the pins to your shirt while you work, then hang them on the line for the coming weeks (put the 3s on the line to be done in 3 weeks). It's fun.