Cleaning House

It’s that time of year again where we are ready for a good Cleaning House Spring Cleaning – deep clean the house, reorganize the drawers, rotate the closets……everything must be cleaned and organized or donated – this will be our mind-set for the next couple weeks!!

The typical Spring Cleaning House used to be a pretty painless Saturday chore. However, now with 3 Little Chefs running around wanting to help out or making messes faster than I can keep things clean, I had to rethink the way to Cleaning House…..If I can’t beat’em to the cleaning – I want them to join ME! Here are some of our tips we have come up with to help involve our Little Chefs in keeping our home clean and help with the Spring Cleaning!

• The first thing I learned early on was to start them when they were young. I had to show and teach them, which meant that I had to stop cleaning when my kids where sleeping…..Yes, a very hard thing to do. But, my Little Chefs have known from an early age that they have an expectation to do their part around the house. To manage a home we all need to work together. And I noticed that it really made them feel important that they were contributing in some way, even if it was just doing chores and cleaning the house!
• I also had to have realistic expectations and be very specific with chores. I found that instead of telling my Little Chefs to clean the toy room (which would always look like a tornado went through), I would ask them to clean a specific item – for example,  all the cars, dolls, or even pick up all the red color toys.  I also learned that I could not expect my Little Chefs to clean perfectly. I would just need to be proud of them for what they did and continue to work together and learn.
• Make it fun – We love to listen to our favorite music while we clean – so, Blast the Music!!! Often times, we clean to one song, and dance to another!!
• My Little Chefs also like to see their accomplishments.  So I realized that I needed to make some type of Chore Chart.

We have created some (okay, I went a bit crazy, there are a lot) of chore cards here that we use for our daily chores, and Spring Cleaning House Chores. I just printed them out on card stock, cut out  the ones out I wanted to use and laminated them. I initially stuck magnets on the back and put them on the fridge. But now, I punched a hole in the top of each card and have a chore board with hooks on them –  a “To Do” hook and “Done” hook for each of the Little Chefs. I hang their chore cards each day on their “To Do” side, and they just move the card over to the “Done” side.

Chore Cards 1

Chore Cards 2

Chore Cards 3

Chore Cards 4

 And last but not least, when the house is all sparkly clean………LEAVE!!!! That way no one can mess it up.  Okay, kidding aside, we really leave and take the Little Chefs out for a reward – a fun movie, ice cream, any thing they enjoy to tell them a BIG thank you and good job!

If you are looking for a chore chart for your readers try our Chore Chart Lanyard Style which includes Free Printable Chore Charts.