Chore Charts Part.. oh, I don't know. Let's call it 37.

In my continuing search for the perfect chore chart, I have finally given up and just printed something off the computer. I know, I know, it isn't cute, fancy, it isn't the workmanship of my own hands, it doesn't use cute stickers, cute pictures, or even a gimmick of any kind. How non-Utah is that?

I don't know how to make a file downloadable from a blog (any ideas?) but here's a picture:



The above is Princess' chart. The best part is, it has worked for a whole one day! I've coupled it with the House Fairy idea, but after watching just one HF video I've ingested enough saccharine to go into a sugar coma. Fantastic idea and I'm thinking of making a donation out of pure joy, but I'm still feeling a little ill. The basic idea is that the kids never know when the HF is going to come and see their rooms. If they are clean, the HF will leave a surprise. If not, they'll get a little note that says "better luck next time!" I've told mine that I'm going to pretend to be a HF since we don't do the whole "some mythical person is watching you, so be good or else" thing.

Man asked why I didn't just leave the Fairy bit out and just tell them that they'd be getting surprise inspections. The soldier flavor of that doesn't agree with me either.

I love the positive reinforcement of it though. The kids woke up this morning, having cleaned their rooms yesterday, and perfected them before going to school.

Now, you have to understand that these kids get woken up at 6:15am in order to be ready to walk out the door by 7am. This morning they were ready to go by 6:40 (shoes and all!) and wanted to put a dent in their chore charts and make sure everything was Fairy-worthy. Tag even started a load of laundry for me. That right there was worth the entire effort of printing these things out.

Now, today is day two. If we're still doing ok by these ideas by next week, I'm going to throw myself a little party.