I made chore cards. This post is not funny but very informative if you’re into doing chores and stuff. If you’re not then you’re probably going to be bored with this.

Saturday, August 25th, 2012 at 1:01 pm

My project for today was to complete part of our chore organization system. I’ve got about one more week to get everything together and ready for the start of the school year. I incorporate chores into the school schedule because I feel that being able to clean out a toilet is one of the most important parts of growing into a adult.

Our chore system is basically the same as it has always been, I’ve just tweaked it a little because as the kids grow, situations can change a bit. Plus, we tend to get bored around here and a new system always seems to get us back on track for a little while.

I have our chores separated into two main categories. Daily chores and weekly chores.

Daily chores are done without pay. This is important because throughout life there will always be jobs my kids will have to do without any sort of reward. They have to learn that some jobs simply need to get done and nobody is going to pay them to do their own laundry. Well, nobody I’ve ever met before anyway. Wait… Will somebody pay me to wash my own laundry? Are their people who do that? Cause that would be a pretty sweet deal for sure.

Our weekly chores are assigned a monetary value. It is important for my children to learn how to work for a wage, how to keep their money in a safe place, and how to spend money responsibly. I want them to feel what it’s like to receive a paycheck for a job well done.
It is also very important to me that my children learn from a young age that money is not a toy. For some reason all of my children, when they hit the age of 6 or 7, want to start playing with their money as if it’s a toy.

Today I just worked on the weekly chore cards.

I made them on the computer, printed them, cut them out, then laminated them with my super sweet laminator. I cut them out again and rounded the sharp, pointy corners with a little corner rounder gadget my sister gave me a long time ago.

I think I’m going to put magnets on the back of them and have them hanging in our chore center. When a child takes one and does a job I’ll mark their initials on it with a grease marker so the other kids know it’s been done, and so I’ll know who to pay at the end of the week. On Monday, when the chores are reset, I’ll wipe off the names and hang them back up so we can start over. Not all of the weekly chores really need to be done each week so I’ll only put up the chores that need to be done.

Now that that’s done I’m going to try to come up with a daily chore schedule that I’ll laminate and keep posted in our chore center. If it turns out awesome I’ll post about that one too.