Dear Publishers, Please feel free to publish the following article (in its entirety) in your publications as long as the bio at the end of the article is included and links are made active if possible. Please do not make changes without permission. A courtesy copy of the publication this article is included in would be appreciated; my e-mail is [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) .
Get your Family Racing to Complete Chores! by Monica Resinger _http://homemakersjournal.com_ (http://homemakersjournal.com) My family went on a mini vacation a few years back which included a stay at a very nice hotel. During our stay, I admired how clean the room was and wished my home could be that clean. We had a long drive home and I thought about how I could start keeping my home that clean or close to it. The reason my house wasn’t as clean as I liked was because I didn’t do everything that needed to be done when it needed to be done—in other words, I didn’t have a system. What I came up with was a chore schedule list. I started out by writing down every chore that needs to be done for each room in the house, then I labeled them with either a D (for daily), a W (for weekly), an M (for monthly) or 1-3 x a year. Then I went to the computer and opened up 4 new documents and saved them as Daily, Weekly, Monthly and 1-3 x a year. On each of these documents I listed each chore that needs to be completed in that time frame and left an area for checking off each chore on each day, week or month when completed. It has been a while since I created these chore schedules and since then, I’ ve come up with an excellent way to get my family to help. Here’s what I did: I made the chores schedules into tables with spaces to write in whoever’s initials completes the chore. At the end of the week, we tally up initials and we come up with 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place winners (4 people in my family). First place is the one who has the most initials and so on. We give $10 to 1st place, $7.00 to 2nd, $5.00 to 3rd and a giant candy bar to 4th. To even be considered for a prize, a family member must have at least 7 chores completed. This method has members of my family racing to get as many chores done as possible within a week trying to win 1st place! The house has been much cleaner and my kids are learning housecleaning skills while having fun trying to win. Of course it has been much less work for me so it is well worth the money paid for prizes. If you don’t agree with paying money for chores, then you could give other types of prizes such as time spent with mom or a day at the park, etc. Monica is the founder Homemaker's Journal E-publications, the growing home of many fun and informative home and garden e-books, tip sheets, articles and more! _http://homemakersjournal.com/_ (http://homemakersjournal.com/) Get a FREE Slowcooker Recipe E-book when you subscribe to Monica's FREE e-zine for homemakers! To subscribe and receive instructions for picking up your FREE e-book, just send a blank e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Feel free to publish this article as long as the above bylines & this note are included; notification at [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) would be appreciated. **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHILE USING ARTICLES POSTED ON THE GROUP: 1. Print the article in its entirety. Don't make any changes in the article . 2. Print the resource box with all articles in their entirety. 3. Send the Author a copy of the reprinted article or the URL where the articles was posted. Anything short of following these three rules is a violation of the Authors Copyright. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
