How come I need to answer the same question 6 times? I really should just gather them all together and make a public announcement!

ds#2 What'cha doing mom?

You don't want to know.

ds#1 What'cha doing mom?

You don't want to know.

dd#4 What'cha doing mom?

You REALLY don't want to know.

What I was doing was a bit of maternal terrorism...

- New chore charts  BWA HA HA!!

I've been thinking of how to better arrange some chores that we need to get done regularly. It had to balance the workload for all 6 children. After months of mulling these were the result.

In the first circle are icky chores that will change daily: recycling, catbox, compost, garbage, wash lunch dishes, dry lunch dishes.

In the second circle I've divided up the main parts of the house so every child has an area to tidy daily during 'tidy up time' for that week. Mainly just responsible for getting the floors tidy and anything left on them put away. We are really bad at not putting bits'n'bobs on the floor. The dining room kid also clears the serving dishes from supper and wipes the table.  Floors also need sweeping daily and vacuuming at least 2x a week.

The outer edge has the children's names, the chores are listed on the middle circle, and the inner circle says either 'change daily' or 'change weekly'.

By putting the responsibility for these chores on them I can focus on other chores that need doing. Decluttering, organizing, etc.

I made them by cutting out 3 poster board circles each, writing on them, laminating them at the library, joining them with brad fasteners, and hanging them with blue sticky-tack. Did you know that when your laminator is only heating on one side you can affix the other side by ironing your project between two towels? I do now!

I felt I had to get this planned and implimented this summer as we have an exchange student coming to live with us for 3 or so months starting the end of August. I didn't want her stuck with the same chores our dd who is going off on exchange does daily ... dining room and garbage ... day after day after day....

Also it is time the littler 3 got some chores that were challenging. I know the older ones at the same ages were working a lot harder than the little ones currently are. Time to step up to the plate ! Not to mention with the older ones starting to move out I need the littles not to be so little.