Chores are not generally fun, nor does anyone even want to do them. The simple word, chore, does not depict the best view of a the activity. The dictionary defines chore as (1) a small or odd job; routine task (2) chores, the everyday work around a house or farm and (3) a hard or unpleasant task i.e. Solving the problem was quite a chore. With all this negativity, how do your get the family to unite to help out with the work around the house? How about creating some new ways to get chores done. And how about adding some fun into the overall process of weekend chores? These three steps can help you get the family involved and keep them involved in helping keep your home clean.
Create Habits
When involving children, getting them started as young as you can can create an expectation and a habit that the children will be involved in the care of the family home. Even if your children are older, you can still create habits. They may need some more work and more frequency until you have created or built the habit. Creating these habits requires consistency. Making sure you have a consistent set of activities and chores for each family member. And then tackling those chores during the same time during the week or doing it together as family.
Habits can also be created by creating chore charts or checklists that are visible for the family to see regularly. These charts can be purchased, can be crafted using whiteboards, chalkboards or bulletin boards. These charts can also create a sense of accountability for the entire family. Accountability helps family members remind each other what they need to do to reach their goal.
Engage with Fun
In order to create the habits and change the perspective of chores, creating fun programs around these activities can help us achieve a happier environment to keep a clean, healthy and well functioning home. Along with the chore charts, creating a check off program can help family members understand what they have done and what is left to do. Will adding stars and smiley faces to completed tasks help the family engage. Try using standard tools around the house to create games of cleaning like using kitchen tongs to pick up clothes off the floor and put them in the laundry bin. Trying dancing through your chores and adding music throughout the house during chore time. Whoever gets there chores done completely and fastest, get to choose next week’s songs. Like in some exercise classes, try using timers to help children moving onto the next chore. Be careful … no dirty or unfinished chores. Try playing basket ball with laundry baskets or rake up leaves for a quick pillow like padding before adding them to the bags for removal.
Be more creative with the family and create some personal aspects to cleaning. Give each family member their own basket of cleaning supplies to help them take ownership of their tasks. Take a weekend to craft cleaning gloves or smocks that represent each individual family members so they can have more pride in their tasks while having a piece of wear that is fun and personalized.
Rewards
Once you have established your routine and your fun tips, now it is time to create the ongoing system to keep the whole family engaged and willing to continue to help out around the house. Adding a scoreboard to your chore chart can help measure everyone’s success. Offer the family the ability to earn points for something, or dollars for tasks completed or cell phone time. Maybe the best rewards are hugs and two simple words of gratitude, “thank you”.
These simple and consistent tasks can make all the difference if engaging the family in a set of activities to help keep the home clean, safe, healthy and efficient.
