Organizing chores and rewarding positive behavior

[Imahoot]

I don't know about you guys and girls, but I always need help organizing my household chores and how to incorporate them into my children's lives. It has really hit me hard lately that I am just not doing this with my little ones like I did my 13 year old when he was younger. I found an excellent website that does all the work for you as well as keeping track of reward points, subtracting for negative behavior, etc. It also list common rewards for children and it is specific for each age. I just got done assigning my kids their chores and rewards and it took all of twenty minutes to do this for three children. I printed out their lists and have them on track. I don't know if you are interested or not but it really helped our house today. I'll keep you up to date if it works or not.

[Meticulous madness]

I'm really interested in this website, Ima. Will you either post it, or send me a PM with the link?

I definitely believe it's imperative for children to have responsibility and accountability in the home! I have a 3 year old, and I'm trying to be fair about about age-appropriate tasks. So, any help I can get will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Imahoot]

Sorry...I forgot to post the link. I also think it is very important for children to learn responsibility and consequences for their actions.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

[Meticulous madness]

Thanks. I'm going to check it out tonight.

You sound like such an awesome parent! I was reading on some of the other posts/threads, and it sounds like you just really have your priorities in line. Your kids are lucky to have you!

Definitely DO check back in and relay some of your experiences with the site, and the chore-tracking. I love stuff like this.

[Imahoot]

Wow I was blown away by the compliment. Thank you and I do strive to keep up with organizing my family. I had one child for so long and now I have three. It has been such a challenge to get the day to day down especially with my gap in children.

I know I am always looking for helpful sites and parents that have common goals in mind.

What systems does everyone else have for chores/reward/etc?

[runamyrun]

That sight looks pretty cool. I tend to have grand plans with chores, but then I want a cute chore chart. The problem is, I don't know how to make a cute chore chart, and the time involved overwhelms me. So I logged in to the site, and it was pretty easy. I am excited to see how it works. Now let's see if I can stick with it.

[Imahoot]

I'm in the same boat. It takes so long to get it all organized. This seemed almost too easy. My kids love it so far so we shall see if it works well. Good luck everyone that is tryign it.

[Dia Minha]

I haven't had a chance to check out the website. It does look helpful. I just thought I would share with you what it is that we do.

I let my children pick their own chores. I have found they are more willing to do them if they have a say it what it is they are doing. I have the house divided up into sections and they each pick one. They are in charge of making sure it gets done everyday. Whenever they no longer want to do that certain chore they can pick a different one off the list or exchange with a sibling, but only if that sibling is willing. Of course the one downfall is that my three year old can't do any of them by herself. What I have found that works the best for her, is she can decide in the morning whose helper she is going to be. So sometimes she helps brother take out the trash and recycling, sometimes she helps sister pick up, dust, and vacuum the front room, and sometimes she helps mommy with the kitchen or bathroom. This way she is learning a little bit everyday how each of the chores get done and by the time she is old enough to do it on her own she will already have an ideas of how to accomplish the task.

Each child then is in charge of his or her bedroom. I divide up each of the things that need to be done on two lists and they switch lists between the two that share that room. During the summer we also do an hour of outside chores every morning. For this we all go outside and weed, rake, mow, or like today it is clean out the van from our Salt Lake trip yesterday.

By way of reward, the only reward systems I have in place is that they can play with friends only when their chores are done. Also we can't go to the library or grandma's house or on our weekly field trips until all the chores are done. This seems to work for us right now. Right now while school is out all my children have a favorite PBS show they love to watch at 10:00. So we have a race to see if we can get all the chores done before "Fetch" comes on. Then our reward is that we all get to sit down and watch it. There has only been one time we missed the first five minutes and that was because I doubled up on the outside stuff, because a big storm was coming in. Then we just did inside chores aftwards.

Well, it looks like I really rambled on this one. Hope somebody finds something helpful here.

Dia

[Erudite]

Dia, I had a friend who made a simliar system work in her household. I've never really been able to do that effectively, because I find that the kids basically choose not to do anything. That's probably because I'm lousy at remembering to reward, since the clean house is my reward and once I have it I'm satisfied.

I use almost the same system that I grew up with. The house is divided into 4 zones (one for each child). We rotate the zones on a monthly basis so they all learn to clean the whole house. Each zone has 6 daily jobs...5 that are done every day and then a Monday job, a Tuesday job, etc. so that there are jobs that are done once a week too. The Friday job changes by the week, so that on Fridays the kids do a monthly job. This ensures that the entire room is cleaned deeply every month. If you've been in 5D's house...her current job system is built on this idea as well.

This system works really well for us, so long as I stay on top of pushing the kids through each task...which I hope will get better as we keep at it. It's new-ish to us at the moment. It is still taking us most of the morning to get through the 6 daily jobs for all 4 kids. I get my zone done (which is my office) and my bedroom, and then work with each child to complete his or her zone. It seems to take forever because they don't stay on task.

Our reward is "one bean" for each job, so they can earn 6 beans a day. I use pinto beans in a bowl. Each bean is worth .5 which should be paid out each Saturday (so that the kids can pay their tithing on Sunday), only I can never remember to do the beans, let alone the pay out. I wonder if a sticker system would be more effective for awhile.

I've tried to give them time goals too, but my mornings are just crazy enough that there isn't a specific goal during the day usually. A tv show is a good idea though.

Thanks for your thoughts everyone! I hope mine are helpful for you too!

[runamyrun]

Erudite, if you don't mind me asking, what rooms are your zones and what are the jobs you have them do in each room? I have a hard time knowing what my kids can do on a consistent basis. What jobs are appropriate for a 6 and 3 year old?

[Imahoot]

Very interesting ideas. It is so helpful to see what everyone else does. Thanks for the insight and I shall see if this new system works and if not I will try yours out.

[Erudite]

Originally Posted by runamyrun

Erudite, if you don't mind me asking, what rooms are your zones and what are the jobs you have them do in each room? I have a hard time knowing what my kids can do on a consistent basis. What jobs are appropriate for a 6 and 3 year old?

I have an 11 year old, 8, 6, and 4 year old. The 4 year old can do most of the tasks, though I have to help him with them usually. The 11 and 8 year old can do all of the tasks. The 6 year old still needs help with the vacuum. I also carefully supervise the spraying of chemical stuff to clean the bathroom with the little ones.

The Zones are

• Kitchen and Dining Room
• Library, Front Hall, Stairs, Upstairs Hall, and Front porch
• Family Room
• Bathrooms

Kitchen is stuff like clean out the dishwasher, help with dishes, clean the floor and feed/water the cat. Weekly jobs include washing the sliding glass door, cleaning the outside of the fridge, and moving the chairs so that I can mop. The monthly is stuff like washing the outside of the cupboards, vacuuming crumbs out of the drawers, and helping to fill the pantry from the basement food storage room.

The Library etc zone, daily, are pick up around the entry of the house, inside and out, and vacuum the front hall rug, and pick up and straighten all the areas. The weeklys are stuff like dusting, vacuuming, and straightening the coat closet. The monthly jobs are dusting baseboards, vacuuming furniture, and so on.

In the Family room daily they vacuum, straighten, and put things away. Weekly is dust, clean out under couch cushions, sort toys in the toy area so they can be put back in the right box. Monthly, vacuum furniture, wash windows, straight movies, and baseboards.

Bathrooms daily is disinfecting everything normally touched, putting away toothbrushes and hanging towels and sweeping up spilled kitty litter. Weekly is change kitty litter (which only the 11 year old can do without help), scrub inside of toilets, clean mirrors and floors. Oh, the bathroom kid is also assigned to help gather and sort the laundry. Monthly, it's make sure the rugs get washed, scrub tub, baseboards, and cupboard.

I've put all this on to "cards" that the kids keep on our bulletin board and then take to their zone daily to use as a checklist....at least that's how it's supposed to all work. Today...it's 3pm and I'm still asking kids to finish up their zone cleaning...sigh!

Oh, and I just adjusted all the zones so that the Thursday job is to vacuum the bedrooms. I do laundry on Friday, so I'm hoping if we can focus on the bedrooms on Thursdays all the laundry will make it to the laundry room on Friday.

Finally, I do keep telling my kids that if they'll do their jobs each day that it will get easier and faster to do, till it hardly takes any time at all. They know this is true because the favorite zone in the house is the Library zone. It appears to have a lot to it, but because it doesn't get used as much and is easy to clean up if it is used, it is the easiest and fastest to clean up.

If anyone wants it, I'm happy to send you my chart. Just post your email address.

[Imahoot]

I have been thinking more and more about the zones. I love this idea. Can you email me the information that you are offering. I am very impressed with your systems and what your kids do. It is very strange around here but my kids are the only ones that do chores. It is a little frustrating but I do truly believe it is going to help them so much in life.

[Erudite]

Is there a way to attach something to the board? If there is, I can't figure it out. It is just a WORD document for my job chart. I can't email you without an email address. If you don't want it public, you could put it in a private message to me.

[Imahoot]

Yeah I private messaged you.

With word documents you can copy and then paste it here. I have done this before with long winded posts of mine.

Thank you!

[5ft Diva]

Zones make more sense because the areas are more defined. Plus, because the areas are easily defined, dad is able to stay on top of them as well if they get distracted.

[Big_Sissy]

To attach a document click "post reply"

Then near the bottom of the new page you will see a button that says "Manage Attachments" <<-- click on it.

The manage attachments will appear, click browse, and find the doc you want to attach, click okay, than click upload. Then close the window and submit your post.

Let me know if you have trouble with it.

[Erudite]

I would just copy and paste, but they're in columns and it looks better to look at the attachment...hope it works!

[5ft Diva]

Looks good, Erudite!

[Big_Sissy]

Yep, perfect!