The Chore Board

I couldn't take it anymore!  The clothes, the dishes, the garbage, recycling, crushed goldfish on the carpet in the dining room.  (Yes, the wonderful people who lived here before us put CARPET in the dining room.  Cost effective? Yes.  Intelligent? No.)  In my last post, I gave myself a well-deserved pat on the back for my ability to maintain all of these tasks for one glorious day.  That post got me thinking, however, about the beautiful art of delegation.  It is, for sure, an art.  The tasks by themselves are not difficult by any means.  As a collective group, perpetually intensifying day after day after day, they are a bit overwhelming.  Our kids, for a long time, have been expected to help with these daily chores and usually do a pretty good job of taking care of their own messes.  I was thinking that maybe if I had a better means of accountability, it would help to ease my burdens a bit and also to teach them the responsibilities of contributing to the family.  I was shopping for the daycare at Target yesterday and happened upon "The Chore Board".  It was set up for daily delegation of chores and had enough room for 4 little contributors.  I saw this as more than a mere coincidence and bought it and brought it home for immediate implementation.  

I made out the list of chores: Dishes, Trash/Recycling, Vacuum/Dust, Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Daycare/Playroom and assigned specific duties per child, per day.  The reward: One star for completion of each assigned chore.  Each star is worth 20 cents for commission at the end of the week.  (Our children do not receive an "allowance", they earn commission.  Thank you, Dave Ramsey.)

After listing all of the chores, I had one empty space at the bottom of my chart.  I cannot have an empty space at the bottom of my chart. I see it as a weakness!  Not really,  but it would really, really bug me so I had to come up with one final category.  I thought for a minute and ruled out all of the things that I considered to be common sense responsibilities such as, brushing teeth and getting dressed and decided on Proactive Actions.  When I recognize the kids taking the initiative to do something that was not asked of them, they will receive an additional star in this category.  At the end of the week, if they have 5 Proactive Stars, they can cash them in for things like computer time, a slumber party in the loft or Wii time.  The Result:  I have never seen my children move so quickly!  No complaints, no groaning, just sheer motivation.  Not only are they motivated to complete all of their chores, but they are SO excited about the Proactive Stars that they are helping in ways they never have before.  It's incredible what a little positive reinforcement will do.  I'm sure the excitement will fade eventually once the newness of it all wears off, but I will enjoy it for now.  I'm just not sure what to do with all of my free time!