When my children were very young I found a wonderful book called the Sidetracked Home Executives of something like that.  It was old and tattered even then, but I thought I could use a book about managing a household and it was only a quarter, so I bought it.  Basically it's a system of organizing everything from daily/weekly/monthly/yearly chores, to addresses, to Christmas shopping lists, to recipes/menu planning, the uses are endless. 

When I use this system my house is clean and life is organized, but for some reason I never use it for more than six months or so.  It's like the system whips me into shape and then I slowly move away from it and then some time later I realize I'm in a muddle again.  I'm in a muddle again, so out come the 3X5 cards and my children start groaning.  They know what the colorful cards mean. 

Luckily every time I reinstate the system I have only to tweak a few cards to have us humming along again.  Fortunately, I was using it as early as last August and so I didn't have to change anything.  I just pulled out all of the cards this morning and we will work through them until we have completed all of them, then I will file them in the box.  We got through a great deal today and will finish up Monday, so we should be back on track next week. 

This is a picture of today's monumental amount of tasks:

We usually don't have nearly this number of cards for each person, but even after yesterday's cleaning jag I felt that there was still some deeper cleaning needed, so we went at it some more today.

This is the box wherein I keep the 3X5 cards (note the calendar taped in the box top--very handy!:. 

I tried to take a picture of one of the cards, but it came out horribly.  Basically the cards are color coded by frequency of the chore--dailies are yellow, weeklies are orange and anything less frequent than weekly are white.  Pinks are personal things like, Read A Book or Write a Letter or whatever.  I have a pink card telling me to send in attendance forms at the first of each month.  Of course you can code this with any color you like or no color if you wish. 

On each card you write the chore title near the top in the center and the time it takes to do it in the right hand corner and the frequency in the left corner.  You want to do each chore and time it because you will be surprised at how fast some chores CAN be done (not to say they always WILL be done that quickly, but that can be motivating for dawdlers).

Under the title you write step by step instructions for the chore doer--right down to cleaners and cleaning equipment used.  I highly recommend this step because you might end up having a child clean a wood floor with Mop and Glo.  (It does come out, but with much mopping and moaning!)

The cards are then filed in the box behind the date they will next be performed.  This is the first section of the card file box where there are 31 cards corresponding to the days of the month.  As you complete each day's chores you file the cards behind the next date that you want it performed (so dailies would go behind the next calendar day, 2X weekly behind the third or fourth calendar day, weeklies behind the seventh calendar day, etc.)and the date card goes to the back of that section so the next date is in the very front of the box.  (This is where the calendar really comes in handy.)

Behind the 31 calendar day section I have 12 cards with month names on them.  At the beginning of each month I pull out all monthly chores to be performed and file them behind the dates when I want that action to occur.  For instance on December 1st I will pull out the December cards and one of them will say "Put up the Christnas Tree" and I will then file it behind whatever date we decide to do it on.  These cards usually include things like, Get Out the Winter Clothes or Fill Out Christmas Cards, you know, seasonal, infrequent things.

Behind that section is are alphabetical cards where I keep an address book.  If you make a card for every phone number you have to look up this saves a lot of time.  It's very easy to maintain--somebody moves, just presto-chango, new address/phone.  You do, however, have to be diligent about making new cards, which I haven't been in a really long time.  I'm going to try to get back up to par on this as well, though.

Here are some pictures of my children hard at work:

Elizabeth cleaning the stove and Rebecca cleaning her Papa's bathroom.

Josh was not happy about the amount of chore-doing lately and did not want his picture taken at this time.  I did photograph one of his completed chores but it came out badly.  I am not a photographer.