House and Chore Solutions

I've blogged before (and before, and before) about some of the solutions that help us function in our little house with four kids and just generally a busy life. Here are three more small changes I've made in the past couple of weeks...

There was an awkward space at the head of the girls' bunk bed - there wasn't enough room between the bed and the wall to really play in that space. Often it just became a parking space for random toys and looked junky.

So I added a second bookshelf and made a little reading nook


I got a bathmat from Target that is made from some sort of super cushiony memory foam stuff and put that down first to make the wood floor softer, then added some blankets and pillows. The girls LOVE this space now! And with two emergent readers in the house, having a space that inspires them to read is great. The books are generally organized by fiction/nonfiction and reading level.


The next idea is from Martha Steward. Did you know they make magnetic paper that can go through a printer?? They do! It went through my HP color laser printer with no trouble at all - I was in awe (and yeah, I held my breath waiting for the whole thing to jam up and break forever while it was going through).

Here is our new chore chart


This is the chart "fully loaded" and ready for Saturday morning. Most days they only have the dark green chores - those are their daily chores. I put them on their chart at night and the next day as they do their chores, they remove them. The goal is to have no chores left on their chart. The blue chores are their Saturday jobs, so since tonight is Friday night, this is what it looks like tonight. Again, as they do their chores and jobs tomorrow, they will take them off.

We don't do allowances (yet - they are too young for money, we think) and I don't really believe it paying or rewarding kids for doing chores. To me their chores are just like me cooking dinner and Davis taking out the trash - these are the things we all do to help out and keep our family taken care of. We are also building good habits.

BUT I do have a little envelope on the bulletin board that has "perfect chore score" written on it - if they do all of their chores and Saturday jobs for a whole week, they can pick out a reward from the envelope. They are things like having me make their bed for a week, staying up to read an extra book or play a game one night, etc. It's working well. At this age, often having kids doing chores creates MORE work for parents - teaching them to do the work and nagging them constantly to get it done. But I think it's a huge mistake to give up or wait, and I can see in Sophia that having a child who is used to doing chores since age 2 does pay off!

And finally, Sophia is starting piano lessons. She is so excited! I needed a way to help her keep track of time, because I'm making her practice for 15 minutes every day. I found this clock at West Elm - I love it! It's actually been great to have a great big clock in the living room, no more craning our necks to look at the kitchen clock all the way in the room next door ha ha!


Our house is still on the market, and we are still making plans to remodel if it doesn't sell. But in the meantime I have decided to continue to make it work for us as best we can. We do love our little bungalow!!