This is our main room cleaning chart. It has pictures of all the rooms in the house that I want the girls to help clean and an envelope to hold the various jobs they will be doing. The week starts with all 5 rooms on the "To Do" side. One of my two older girls turns away from the chart while the other arranges the rooms in any order she wants. Then the other girl, who is still turned away from the board, chooses a number from 1-5 and that's the room we clean for the day. When the room is finished, the picture gets moved to the "Done" side and the next day we'll have 4 rooms to choose from.
After we pick the room, we remove the jobs from the job envelope.
There are several jobs in the envelope - sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the mirrors, straightening book shelves, etc. We first have to decide which jobs apply to our room of the day and then we flip them over so we can't see the pictures, mix them up and choose our job. Not everything that has to be done is pictured. I just chose some major tasks that can be done by anyone or with minimal help from me. The 3yo also chooses a job, only she is my "helper" for that task. The remaining jobs are assigned by me as-needed and according to age/skill level.
Some weeks we will shift focus and do a light basic cleaning and work on cleaning the closet or washing baseboards, windows or the walls. We don't clean EVERYTHING, every week or we'd all get burned out. This method assures that the house gets a good cleaning each week and a thorough cleaning each month. My girls like the "game" aspect of this system and whatever makes cleaning more fun for them, definitely makes it more fun for me.
1 comment:
That's fabulous! I love that the pictures show what it should look like- clear expectations.
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