Step one: The Daily Help Board
It is way too much work for me to do everything necessary to keep my home and my family running smoothly. There is no reason why my children should not be helping me with day to day tasks. My husband came up with the idea of the help board. There is a column of tasks that need to be done daily that the children can help me with. Each child gets their own color star that assigns them a responsibility. Those responsibilities are expected. At the bottom of the board there is a star bank where stars that the kids earn are deposited. They can earn extra stars with good manners, doing what they are asked to do when they are asked to do it, performing another child's task when they don't want to, being a good listener, etc. Poor behavior results in a loss of stars. Red stars represent a negative amount of stars. We make it a competition. At the end of the week the child with the most stars wins. They can either donate their stars to a bank to earn a big family trip such as the Great Wolf Lodge or Coco Keys and draw a mystery envelop (smaller rewards like daddy/daughter date, choice of dinner, choice of snack) or they can choose to trade the stars in for princess of the day. Princess of the day chooses what we eat (at home), what we watch on TV, snacks, family games, etc. Any red stars on the board get taken away from the family trip bank.
This was put into place and in effect for several months before we moved on to the next step. Once the kids (and us as parents) got used to the star system we moved on to the next step.
Step two: Developing a Laundry System
I had two major problems with laundry. 1) I had big issues with mating the tons of white tiny socks. I just don't have time to sit around trying to decide whether or not the socks actually go together and who they belong to. 2) My girls are pretty close in age so doing laundry was difficult because I had to look at every little tag to see who it belonged to.
I needed a system to keep my laundry separated. I bought laundry bins at the Dollar tree and lingerie bags from WalMart. I put each of my girls' initials on the bins and and bags with a sharpie. I used a hook from 3M and hung the lingerie bags over the hampers in my kids' rooms. I instructed them to put their clothes into their hampers and place their socks in their sock bag. It took them a while to get into this habit. Now even if they decide to strip off downstairs they understand that they must carry their clothes upstairs and put them in their hampers.
Second I bought a label maker and I labeled all of my children's drawers. It has their name on it and what goes in the drawer. This helps them with getting dressed when I am too rushed to pick out clothes for them and they can now put their clothes up after I wash them (the ones that are old enough to read anyway).
When I am ready to do their laundry I ask a girl to zip up her sock bag, place it in her hamper, drag it down the steps, and load her clothes in the washer. I will wash, dry, and fold her clothes. Then she drags her hamper back up the steps and put her clothes back where they belong.
Again, this process has been in place for several months before we decided to add another change to our home.
Step three: Keeping up with My Kitchen
Now that my children are a little older they can unload the dishwasher, set the table, and clear the table. I keep my dishes in a lower cabinet so my children can easily take care of these tasks. If space is a problem you can buy and expandable pantry shelf from Clever Container that allows you more vertical space to store your dishes.
We are currently in the process of adding dishwasher loading to the children's list of responsibilities. The first run through worked well enough but there is still some instruction that is needed.
So far I am pleased with this aspect of our revolution. It has been a tremendous help to me and the children are learning responsibility. It is a win win situation!
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