Fluff the Nest Friday: Chores for Children

Around here, Friday is the day to “fluff the nest”, which is just a much cuter way of saying “clean the house”. Am I right? So my Friday posts are all about tidying up and getting the house fresh and in order for the weekend. Some weeks my nest-fluffing comes more easily than others. I need motivation each Friday.

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Last Friday I shared about the ABC Pickup which was one of three handy tools I used to train my young children in Nest Fluffing 101! Today’s post is about chores.

I started following the Chore Packs system from the Titus 2 ministry about eleven years ago when my girls were about 8 and 3, and continued using them on and off with the girls, and then later when my son came along. The years we’ve used the Chore Packs have been our most productive years in regards to chore consistency. We have loved Chore Packs!

Chores Packs give children their daily chore list in the form of cards they work their way through each day. The cards are contained in a clear plastic pocket they can clip on their clothes. The Chore Packs system is explained in the Maxwell’s book Managers of Their Chores. They have a Chore Packs website where, with a very small membership fee (less than $10!), you can have access to printable cards for readers and prereaders. I’ve used both and ALL of my children enjoyed the use of their Chore Packs. I wish I had a photo of one of their old chore packs to show you but they are packed away in the attic right now.

I plan to go back to the use of Chore Packs with my son for this next school year, but this past year I tried something different and very simple: a chore hanger!

The chore hanger was just a plain wooden door hanger I picked up at a craft store. I let my son paint it a color of his choosing, and let him paint clothespins in a variety of colors. I had him paint a whole pack of clothespins so we’d have extras in the future when we needed to change his chore list. I wrote his regular daily to-dos on each clothespin and clipped them on the hanger in the order he would do them throughout the day. Some are for morning, some for lunchtime break, some for after school, and some for evening. There were additional chores not on the daily list such as dusting his bedroom, cleaning the trash out of the van, scooping the yard (dog), etc. The door hanger was just for his everyday routine.

When he accomplished an item on the hanger, he moved the clothespin from the “DO” side to the “DONE” side. The hanger was handy because it started on his bedroom door in the morning, but could be carried room to room with him and just left on the doorknob of the room he was in at the moment. At bedtime we moved all the clothespins back to the “DO” side and hung it on his bedroom doorknob, ready for the next morning.

To assist young ones with their chores, I found that giving them their very own cleaning bucket with their own supplies really got them excited! They got to decorate their bucket with stickers, and I would fill it with their own bottle of spray, paper towels, wipes, rags, a duster, etc. They loved this! It gave them ownership in their duties. I started this when my girls were very young, but with only one difference: instead of cleaning wipes, I gave them a pack of baby wipes so there would be no chemicals for them. The baby wipes just got them used to wiping and cleaning counters and potty, but then I’d come behind them to disinfect. As they got older I would let them use cleaning wipes. Also, we used a vinegar-based spray, so if they accidentally got it in their eyes or some overspray on their toothbrush, it was ok.

The bucket pictured above is Incredi-Boy’s. Of course my girls don’t use their little buckets anymore, but we still have them in the laundry room cabinets and still think they’re so cute!