Another Chore Wheel

Shortly after I made my last chore post I changed things up. I have finally accepted something about my personality, I hate having to do follow-up for rewards. Our little ticket system for screen time was a disaster. Having kids come to me at the end of a chore, or even the end of a day just didn’t work for me and some kids were super motivated and some where not. I didn’t like keeping track of everything, and then I moved the tickets during the great living room makeover and I lost them. Oops. So I came up with a new chore wheel.

This new wheel has added chores from other areas of the house. I combined some of the tasks from the previous wheel and added other. I also took my oldest child off since she is hardly home, and I added another younger child. This system works well for our family. I can look at what needs done and then let the child who’s job it is know they need to do some work. It also gives me time to work with littler ones on any given chore for a week at a time and help them learn what they need to do.

But what about my oldest? Does she still have to help around the house? You betcha. On the weekends she helps the younger girls with their chores. We also put her in charge of making a meal plan and buying the groceries. We give her a budget and either she orders online for pickup using our debit card, or we pull out the cash and give that to her, or some combination of both. This has been a huge help for me since now I don’t have to think all the time about what to cook, and since she has her driver’s license I don’t need to go with her unless she needs something from Costco. I have been going with her, though, and it’s been kind of nice to have one on one time with my daughter. We only have her home for one more year before she heads off to college so I’m savoring the times we get to spend together.

So far this is working well for us. Things have been a little mixed up because we are putting new floors in our kitchen and living room, which has made chores for some of them harder to do at times. You can’t sweep the kitchen floor if there isn’t a kitchen floor, for instance, but once we get everything back together we should be able to jump back in. The kids are already familiar with this model, we just need to go over what is expected for each section since it has changed a little bit. If there is a lesson that I’m learning it is that life is always changing and we need to adjust with the changes. I don’t need to change everything and I don’t need to just give up, but I can make small tweaks here and there to make things fit better for our family.