My 8 year old is in charge of cleaning the kids’ bathroom every Wednesday. I have gone through cleaning it with him several times, but realized that he would also need some type of checklist to help him learn and remember how to get every nook and cranny. When he started cleaning the bathroom a couple of years ago, he was still a beginner reader… so I put together a picture checklist for him so he could more independently accomplish his chore!
I devised this chore chart for my Kindergartener, who still found reading to be an arduous task. Having pictures next to each task helped him to remember at a glance what he needed to get done for chores for the day. It was easy to search on Google for images to represent each chore. Laminating the page and allowing him to check it off each day was really enjoyable to him. And yes, “catch flies” was a great chore which he loved. We had so many flies in our home that Summer, and he loved capturing them with his net!
When I was a Cub Scout den leader, the boys were required to write an emergency contact list. I wasn’t able to find any that I liked pre-made online, so I designed my own using pictures I found. We have one of these emergency contact lists printed out and posted on our fridge as part of our emergency preparedness.
If it’s not on the schedule, it won’t get done. After my bathrooms didn’t get cleaned for longer than I could remember, I decided that it was time to divide up my household chores and focus on one specific thing each day. My grandparents have Monday as their “cleaning day”, but realistically my kids and mothering cannot be put on hold for the span of an entire day in order for me to do housework. Splitting up the housework into shorter increments during the week makes more sense in a house with little kids 🙂 Here is my schedule:
It’s hard keeping up with laundry with several little children at home! I used to have two laundry days a week, during which I would do two loads– lights and darks. Then I would just wash diapers whenever I was running low. But then I’d end up with a seemingly overwhelming amount of clothes to fold and put away. I read that doing one load of a laundry per day was helpful for other families, so I decided to put it into play. So far it is working really well! I put a load in first thing in the morning, and then I put it in the dryer at morning break. By mid-day chore time, the clothes are dried and ready to be folded and put away. I fold the clothes while I send our oldest child on a mission to put the clothes away as quickly as I get them folded. Here is the schedule I’ve been following:
I like rotating our meals so that we don’t eat the same protein two nights in a row. It just gives mealtime a little more variety. Here is a list of our favorite meals, so that when I’m making our monthly meal plan I can quickly scan our dishes and plug them into our calendar. All of the recipes can be found on my sister site: http://www.ourgreatfamilycookbook.wordpress.com (Use the search function on the right side of the page to find a specific recipe!)
Domesticity at its finest! 