I haven’t been the best in the past about organizing chores with my kids.  Instead of having some kind of routine or chore chart, where they know what they are expected to do ahead of time, I just asked them to come help me as needed.  Plus I tried to teach them basic manners like clearing your own dishes from the table.  The important word here is “tried.”  I still find a ridiculous amount of dishes in the rooms that they aren’t allowed to eat in.

We taped out placement for our kitchen island and have paint out for the cabinets and new countertops ready to install, but Brandon did his best work in the kitchen zone anyway.

The end result is kids who know how to do basic things but aren’t self directed.  I started getting angry, towards the end of the school year, that my my kids could come home and sit in a disgusting room and play Minecraft with each other on their ipods and not even think about picking up a throw pillow or taking a plate to the kitchen without being asked.  I know they are tired from school, but that’s no excuse for being lazy slobs.

I turned to pinterest once more, just in case there was a new chore chart idea that might work for us.  I have tried so many, and by tried, I mean I bought the supplies to craft them and then sold the supplies in my yard sale a few years later.

30 Handmade Days to the rescue! Her Summer Rules were perfect for us, because all I had to do was print it out on cardstock, laminate it (or put it into a protective sleeve) and stick it to a clip board with a dry erased marker attached with yarn. I pulled up excel and copied her style, but changed the details to match our specific needs.

Then I made a 2nd sheet inspired by the Fly Lady’s zone cleaning.  I divided the main parts of our house up into 4 zones, because I have 4 kids home this summer.  The kids set the timer for 20 minutes and work that long in their own zone.  They can pick from the list and get to stop when their 20 minutes is up.  Sometimes I work with the kids on sticking to a job until the job is finished, but sometimes it’s a better strategy to just work on a big project with a distant deadline in bite sized chunks of time.

The Secrets to Motivating Kids to Clean

1. Clear Expectations.  They know where to start and how to do it and where to find the supplies.  (Please use safe non-toxic cleaning supplies.)
2. Time limits.  If the job can’t go on forever, they are more likely to start it.  Fly Lady recommends 15 minutes per zone, but we have a big house with lots of people in it, so 20 minutes works better for us.  Fly Lady was also designed for 1 person to do alone.  For that reason, only 1 zone gets looked at each week.  She keeps the more daily type chores  off the zone cleaning list and makes it more a list of monthly type chores.  Since someone is working in each zone every day at our house, my zone list includes some daily and weekly chores as well.
3. Positive Feedback: There’s a balance between constructive criticism and being so picky with their cleaning that they get super discouraged.  It’s better to pick out what they did well and let the rest go unless you see some blatant lazy stuff.  Even then, just pick one thing to ask them to improve.
4. Choices: By providing a list and letting them choose from it, they feel more empowered and are less likely to test the limits.  Ideally everything on the list gets done at least once during the week, but they can do it in the order that feels best to them.
5. Change: We change zones every week, which keeps it new and more interesting for them.   To keep it simple, I just have them change in order.  So if they had zone 1 last week, then they will have zone 2 this week, etc.
6. Consequences: If the kids go on electronics without completing their chart, I get to keep the device for the rest of the day.

If you’d like to see the files I printed for my kids, I uploaded them here.  It’s an excel file that can also be opened in google sheets and changed to reflect the needs of your own family.

Do you have a summer system that’s working for you?  I’d love to hear about it.