Friday, June 8, 2012

Summer Chores and Commission

With summer approaching quickly at our house (only 8 more days of school) I’ve started thinking about getting my kids into a routine, or rather keeping a routine going so that I don’t go absolutely insane. Yes I’m definitely the kind of person who likes to keep my house organized, cleaned and picked up at all times, heck what am I saying a mom of 4 kids really I’m happy if everything is just all picked up and out of site- the organization well that’s just a dream. I do however like things to be clean, especially with a 2 month old baby in the house, I especially don’t like the idea of him being down on the floor (even if he is on a blanket) and it being dirty. My 3 1/2 year old isn’t helping very much with that these days either because she’s taking a bit to regressing on her potty training and our carpets seem like they are always needing to be cleaned. I keep thinking maybe I just need to buy a carpet cleaning tool rather than having to rent the Rug Doctor machine so often. Anyway, as many of my readers know I LOVE Pinterest it is great for just about anything and everything. So I’m going to share some of the best ideas I’ve found for cleaning tips and staying organized and some things that I think will help me try and keep a little bit of my sanity with the kids home this summer.

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This is definitely a fun idea and I think you could change it up to fit the needs of your family. A list of your kids daily chores in plain site with a “bonus buck” attached for completing all tasks without being asked.

Definitely a way to keep a routine going with the kids because the list would be a generic list that typically didn’t change from day to day. I think it could also be used for extra chores you want done around the house. We don’t pay our kids an allowance rather we pay them a commission, which means they get paid for each chore they do. For my kids most of the chores are worth about a quarter so I could put four chores on a clipboard and put the dollar attached to the clipboard (or two chores on a clipboard with two quarters in a small Ziploc bag on the clipboard). I think this would really help my kids want to do chores because they have a visual reminder that they are actually getting paid to do these things.

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Definitely another fun one! These remind me of the loyalty cards you can get at restaurants or some retail locations for spending so much money or buying so many sandwiches. This idea wouldn’t necessarily inspire a routine per say however I think it keeps chores fun and interesting to have some sort of incentive that would be a surprise rather than just a list of things you kids have to do. I think I’d probably grab a few fun things and put it in a bucket hidden in my room and when the kids completed their chore cards they could close their eyes, stick their hand in and pick out a prize. The surprise doesn’t have to be a toy necessarily either, it could be a trip to the park, or a trip for ice cream or their choice of movie rental at Red Box. You could go all out and have these cards printed from a place like UPrinting as business cards or you could just use cardstock.

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This is another smart one that I think would help keep things consistent and save quite a bit of paper. I know when I start making chore lists the kids want to start writing their names all over them so that their other siblings know they are doing that job (I like the clipboard idea above because the kids would take the clipboard with them and the other kids wouldn’t even know that job was an option because they wouldn’t see it). This one is nice because the jobs can be marked off with a washable marker and the list can be used again the next day.

Consistency is definitely something that I’d love to implement into our lives so that my kids know what the expectations are around the house and don’t get upset when I tell them something, my oldest is very much like this (or at least she’s in a stage, hopefully) but she’ll freak out when I ask her to do something and she had other plans in her head and didn’t know I wanted her to do something else. I feel like for some kids they just need consistency, not that I’m great about enforcing it or keeping it for very long. Seriously I get bored with things and that’s why I like to have lots of ideas when it comes to chores and kids and ways to get them to really enjoy a little hard work, that’s why I like to change things up! So I can’t preach absolute consistency because I don’t practice it myself, lol.

As a mom I’ve gone back and forth with different ideas, trying different things that work and it seems like some work for a little while and then you just have to switch things up. We’ve done were the kids are paid their commission at the end of each week on Saturday morning and then we’ve also done where we pay them daily for the jobs they do. I will also note that my kids don’t get paid for everything. During the school year they are expected to get ready for school in the morning, make their beds and make sure their rooms are clean before they leave and they are not paid for any of this. They are also expected to do one chore each when they get home from school that they are not paid for. Anything else they want to do on top of that or extra jobs they are asked to do after that all is commission based.

I hope that gives you some ideas to help get the ideas flowing as to what to do with your kids this summer. If you are looking for more ideas definitely check out Pinterest, I refer to it as my virtual corkboard- rather than having everything posted all over my walls at home or papers strewn all over my desk, or even bookmarks in my internet browser that I never go back and look at- it’s a great tool for those who are visual like myself.

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