About a month ago, we did a bunch of Spring cleaning. For about three days, we had a sparkling clean house. And then, life resumed as usual and the house returned to its normal state (right before I sat down to write this, I cleaned apple juice off of a wall, which is about par for the course around here).
Charles and I are constantly asking each other, “Why is it so much work to keep this place clean, and what can we do to make it easier?”
The answer is, WHO KNOWS. I think some people are genetically predispositioned to keep immaculate homes, and I’m just not one of them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try. And maybe more than anything, I want my kids to grow up to be responsible for their own messes and helpful around the house. They’ll be living at home for at least the next 15 years…they’d better pull their weight!
They need to do chores, and I wanted to make a printable chore chart that we could all use.
Jack loves it. But ask me how he feels about it in two weeks.
For months now, I’ve been playing around with different chore charts and systems to keep the kids involved in cleaning, but it’s all kind of fallen flat. A few weeks ago, I received some helpful Spring Cleaning tips from LG’s home economist Lauren Johnson. The tips included this one, that I loved:
- To help involve kids in cleaning, it’s all about making it a fun experience. Make a list of all the items you want to accomplish, then pick the ones that are age appropriate. Display then on a table or wall so the whole family can see. Roll a pair of dice to see who gets to pick first, and have everyone (parents included) choose their chores. This will allow the kids to choose what they think they might enjoy, instead of cleaning because the parents “said so.”
But…no dice. As in, I actually don’t have any dice (die?) around the house. So I thought, “How else can I make this fun and get them involved in choosing chores?” I had a stack of little Post-It notes nearby, and I decided I’d turn those into a chore chart system. It worked, it was easy, and I’ve got two printable chore charts for you today!
Chores are more fun when they’re designated in a colorful way. Or at least, that’s what I’m telling the kids.
I made a personlized chart for my family and laminated it. I wrote out a bunch of chores on sticky notes and stuck them on the fridge. In the morning, I can quickly assign chores to everyone. Once the chores are complete, we just pull the sticky note off the chart and put it back on the fridge. Or, I could use a dry erase pen to write it all out. And if I didn’t have a laminator, the sticky notes would still work. So – lots of options for making this work!
I made a blank version that you can download below.
Click to download.
And then I thought, “Well, not everyone likes rainbows,” (sacrilege!), and, “Not everyone has four people in their family.” So, I made the one below, too.
Click on the image below to download.
Click to download.
Getting the kids to help around the house is a work in progress. And being consistent with the kids and my expectations of them is a work in progress, too. But at least we can work on all that with cute chore charts, right?
This post was inspired by Spring cleaning tips I received from LG – I’ll be bringing more awesomeness from LG in the future!