I love that the kids are getting old enough to help around the house.  And I love that 2 of my kids can read, so I can write their chores out and they can manage them on their own!

Sunday is deep cleaning day at our house, getting ready for daycare- lots of vacuuming, mopping, sanitizing bathrooms, etc.  But these jobs also need to be done throughout the week and I just dread doing them.  I feel like I’m cleaning 24/7 sometimes!  (Except that I DO sleep).

Last year I enlisted Trevor to vacuum the front room on Wednesday nights.  And I enlisted Brooke and Riley to dump the garbage cans.  I took care of the rest.

This week I decided that we’re ready to take it to the next level.

I grabbed one of our magnetic dry-erase boards and wrote out the list of jobs that needed to be done.   After dinner I told everyone in the family that we were going to work together and get all these chores done, and that once we were done we could have some yummy dessert!  (We rarely have dessert, and I made some Ghirardelli Chocolate Brownies which I promised to top with whipped cream, sliced bananas and a chocolate sauce drizzle- DELICIOUS!)

Everyone pitched in and helped and since Riley could read the list herself, she could choose her own cleaning tasks.  There was no complaining and the jobs were getting done.  Riley even went above and beyond on one of her tasks- I was merely asking that all the boots be picked up from the back door, but she also pulled up the mat and vacuumed and mopped beneath it, put it back in place, I was impressed!

We finished all the chores in under 45 minutes, with no complaining, no stalling, no reminding.  I love it!

Here’s the chore chart we made….

I plan to type up a paper version for Sunday so we can do it all over again!