How to Make Chore Charts

I have been so busy lately. We had a hurricane that caused three weeks of missed school….yes….I still have most of my hair. Sanity? Remains to be seen…..

But with all that going on and trying to help friends recover, finding people to store watch the kids, and restarting my own masters program (yup cause I needed that!), I have not had much time to write. However, I have been doing things around the house to improve my organization and stop the daily screaming matches about cleaning up!!!!

New chores were created and instituted. Along with a list to check off for weekly monetary rewards. Because that is the greatest motivator. 

The biggest child…..he has a lot to do…..he is almost 17. He does have a job outside of our home but he is responsible for mowing the lawn (and all the particulars of that), bringing the laundry down on Sundays, taking the trash out, helping change the guinea pig cage (PUKE), and giving the dogs their monthly baths. No checklist for him……he gets calendar reminders on his phone. 

8, almost 9, year old is now in charge of emptying the dishwasher. She is learning how to load it, as she has a very particular mother that likes things loaded in a certain way. This has been so amazing, in fact last night, she said she feels “like its just the right thing to do.” Score one for the parent team! 

6 year old………….she feeds the dogs twice a day. This has been her chore for about a year. She loves those dogs more than any person she has ever met. Sorry grandma! We added more responsibility around picking up her own messes at the end of the day to her. She is NOTORIOUS for “I’m coming back to play with that in a minute….” and never does. So, now she is picking up one mess before moving on to the next. We went to Target (DUH) and got her some more storage bins, she carries all her toys in them, so pick up and transport is easy now! 

So by now you are wondering…..who cleans the toilets? Nope we don’t live in filth. I have a housekeeper that comes every two weeks. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford myself that luxury. I found an awesome lady that does it for relatively inexpensive given the size of my house. On the weeks that she does not come, the kids help with dusting and sweeping etc according to the chart I found here during the hurricane. 

I laminated them with self laminating sheets I always have on hand and we put them on the fridge.  The kids use a dry erase marker to make checks on their charts and Mom or Dad reward them at the end of the week.  The best part, there are no more yelling matches!!!!

Happy teaching,