Sharing the Responsibilities!

We've gone through different times where Monkey helps me more around the house than other times. It normally depends on the season of life we are in. Being pregnant and exhausted all the time with Goose made my rely on Monkey to do more himself even though he was young.

Well now he's 5 years old and I think it's time that he has his everyday responsibilities to help out around the house. We had a good system a few months back with a morning, lunch and evening routine but it fizzled out because our routine changed and I never got the booklets updated.

I headed over to pinterest to look up some ideas and as always there were plenty to chose from. Of course some won't work because of age and reading level. Others won't work because I'm not going to put that much effort into making something for chores, at least not until I know it works for our family.

First some of the contenders if I ever feel like I want to be an overachiever.

I love this chart that I found on The Daily 5 but there are too many step to make this cute addition to our home for me at the moment. Although I do think that what I chose to do will mostly resemble this.

This idea from Burton Avenue would look really cool if I had a full wall to devote to a specific responsibilities, but I don't. But maybe one day when I have more than 2 kids that need to know what they have to do around the house.

Of course this is my favorite from FisherKids on Etsy and why not when I was raised in the construction world and married a contractor. Tools are part of my life, especially now with 2 boys, so this would be super cute to use in our home. But once again to much work to recreate and I just can't justify spending the money on something I could make at home.



Now for the more realistic side of things. Here are the 3 different ways I have to decide from. There is a problem with each one that is making it hard to decide.

I really like this idea from A Crafty Mummy. It's simple, can be fun to make, and easy to use every day and change when needed. The problem is that Monkey doesn't know how to read yet so do I add pictures to the sticks? Do I just have him bring me the sticks each day and then read them to him until he starts to recognize the words? Of course this would be easy to customize and change up too. I love the idea of having a jar and/or color for morning, afternoon, and evening tasks that need to be completed. Also the idea of a work jar/color which hold tasks that he can earn money by completing after his normal jar is done.

Here is my next favorite which didn't have a link to original post :( but I have the same problem again with words instead of pictures. It would be easy enough to create and use every day. It's also pretty cute and can easily hang from the wall under our monthly calendar with all our plans. I could also have many extra clips and each morning add which tasks need to be completed for the day. But I guess I could do that with the above sticks too.

This is my last favorite. It again was just pinned as a picture so I don't know who's idea this is but I love it. It's super cute and can add some cute decoration to the home along with the functionality of it. It would be easy enough to make on a weekend. I love that the magnets have pictures of them along with words and there are tons of pins that show just words for when kids are older. So the problem with this one? To buy pre-made chore magnets is expensive however I can't find free printable with chores that will work for my family to make them myself.

Decisions! Decisions! I'd love to hear your input on what works for your family as well as any tips where I could find cheap pictures. I think I could get away with the words with Monkey and I'm sure he'd learn them pretty quickly but I do have Pilot to consider and I'm sure he won't be reading for awhile longer.