From you, that’s who.
Wow. You guys are rock stars. And as soon as I can get my rear in gear, my house is going to be humming, just like your houses.
Humming a happy tune.
In case you didn’t read the comments from Monday’s post, I’ll hit a few of the highlights. But I really recommend you venturing there yourself. You might just come out of it with a new lease on life.
Or, at the bare minimum, a great idea to try.
Sandy has created and taped inside a cabinet a “list” of the requirements to clean that room. In the kitchen pantry is a main “list” that tells each child what room they are to clean what day. Genius!
Emily has all her kids complete three tasks before they’re allowed to do anything fun:
1. get dressed
2. make bed
3. brush teeth
.. and before bed, they have to clean their rooms.
A Cup of Cold Water keeps the stain remover in the bathroom to hit stains on her kiddos clothes before they even hit the washer.
Mom2Four plays the cleanup game at her house. Gotta try this one.
Danyelle not only has a similar plan to mine already in place at her house, she’s upped the ante and put a timer on a nightlight in her kids rooms. That way, they know what time they can get up: as soon as the nightlight turns off. Eureka! Timers, here I come!
Sara has a family binder and puts each child’s important papers under their own tab. She and her hubby sit down to map out conflicts and get a game plan for the week ahead. And she has more tips, you really need to read her whole comment. A plethora of great ideas!
and Anonymous posted about her TO DO and TA DA chore chart, complete with ‘caught being good’ coins and a treasure chest filled with Dollar Store goodies. Can I come live at your house, Anonymous?
Thanks y’all, for all those great tips. I’ll be applying them around here. Liberally.
Those are great! I love the list in each room that says whats required to make that room clean. I'm stealing that one immediately.
My best one here is small, but huge…if ya know what I mean. It was always such chaos in the morning to get the boys all off to school and not miss the bus (it comes by 7am…ugh), so I made and posted a "Nighttime Checklist". It has everything on there from homework in bag, clothes laid out, hats and mittens set out (God knows how long THAT can take in the morning just to find a matching set), make sure you have lunch money, permission slips filled out……You get the idea. Anything that can be done the night before to make the morning easier and able to run smoothly so that mom isn't running out the front door in her pj's like a madwoman with your assignment. I think I'd have "eat breakfast" on the nightime checklist if I could. 🙂 It's made a big difference in the morning.
i DID read the comments! Just today! I was thinking about how NICE it would be to have a humming house, instead of a HOLLERING house 🙂
I loved the clean room requirements (ummm, the Army calls that SOP – Standard Operation procedure:)) and every room & everything should have one!
We {for the first time EVER} have adopted a few routines this year. One is bedtime & wake up time (phew!) and then, on Wednesdays, we have the same breakfast (cinnamon rolls; it's late start for school) Anyways, just having that one small thing, one day a week (especially in the middle) kinda helps round out our whole week and gives us all something to look forward to.
For them, it's the cinnamon rolls & cartoons on a school day. For me, it's the extra hour of sleep!
We are a cheap thrills family.
Wow! GREAT TIPS! Thanks for sharing them.
I LOVE the tip about the stain remover in the bathroom. We are totally implementing that one around here.
To start our system, I chose a day for each child and helped them clean and organize their room. I let them make their bed to the best of their ability and then I took a picture of their room and posted it on their wall along with a list of clean room requirements that we'd agreed upon. Before, the problem was always that they said they'd cleaned their room, but their idea of clean was not my idea of clean. Now, they have a visual if they're not quite sure. Does your room look like the picture? If they don't clean their room to the level we've agreed upon, I put a post it note on their door and they know it's a room violation. If they get a room violation, they have to first get the room done when they get home from school and then, depending on age, they pick an additional chore.
It's been our best system yet.
I learned a wonderful game from a travel companion. It is called the Ten Minute Tidy. We start a timer and say GO….everyone cleans as fast as THEY can while putting things where they belong. Every once and a while we will yell out the time…."3 min 25 seconds left….move it into second gear" Is great fun and you can't believe what you can do in ten minutes.
These are all great ideas!!! And I NEED that nightlight/timer!!! Seriously, any idea where to get them?
I hate Laundry…mostly those socks that don't have a mate. So I keep and empty detergent box in my laundry room. Then when I'm through folding if I can't find a mate, I just stick all the lone socks in the box. Then about once a month it's someone's chore to sit down and see how many matches can be made from the box.
The second thing that I just started…I have 5 kids so I bought 5 laundry baskets. When it's time to do whites I put each person's socks, underwear, PJ's and towel in their own individual basket. Once a week the kids "have to do the basket" They are repsonsible to put all their things in the drawers. Even my 4 yr. old can do this.
And I only do laundry once a week. I don't like having a stack of clothes here and a basket of clothes there. So I made sure everyone has enough clothes,towels, and underwear to make it for 7 days. And I only wash on Mondays. It's a lot of loads, but at least it's all done in one day.