Remember when I showed you how to make this chore wheel out of paper plates?
Well, that has served us well for a while now, but I thought it was time to shake things up a bit. Nothing stirs up excitement about doing chores like a brand new system, and when I passed by the paint chip section at Walmart, I thought of this handy dandy idea for chore cards.
These are stuck to the fridge with magnetic clips that are labeled with each child’s initial. The 4 big kid chores are orange, yellow, green, blue, and the 2 little kid chores are red and purple. (The 4yo is her brother’s assistant.)
The cards are removed and re-clipped onto a different child’s clip when it is time to rotate.
We do these chores after meals, and so far this system is working well for us.
What chore system do you use?
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I love this! Those paint chips just cry out for me to take them home, but I can never think of anything to do with them.
I’m kind of a slob, so don’t think I’m telling you what *I* do, but I’ve heard cleaning pros say you should go from top to bottom when you clean (ceiling to floor) so you don’t knock stuff down on your newly cleaned floors. Me? I try to do it that way, but somehow it seems like we rarely get to the floors. 
Top to bottom… WHY didn’t I think of that???
I dunno. I had to read it somewhere. My mom never taught me a thing!
Cindy, our floors are always the lasst to get done here too. The goal for this year is to clean them daily, mopping that is. We have wood floors through the house. I have thought of buying those stick vacs, 2-3 in different colors, so the younger kids can vacuum them for me easily then I can quick mop behind them. still working on the process, good luck with your floors!
Yes, we clean top to bottom, I was always taught that. That way, when you dust, you don’t get your newly mopped floors dusty.
We actually used your chore wheel idea for a while until the kids ended up ripping the plates..now we’re in between chore systems. Thhis is a great idea..I’ll have to see if I can make it work for my beginner and non-readers.
(sorry for typos..feeding squirmy baby while typing withone hand lol)
Fantastic idea. I’m just re doing our chores here. Which is in need of sorting!! (Not as many of us though….)
Savannah – You could try very simple line drawings, the children don’t expect you to be Picasso! So you could draw a simple broom and write ‘sweep’ underneath. One word tasks with a little picture, should be good for emergent readers.
This is the best idea for “chore charts” that I have seen! I love that they rotate and are room specific. Now to implement it!
I love this! Fun and colorful, as well as practical : )
Love this idea, I have some around here somewhere, right now I have the chores on a piece of scrap paper and there name tags hanging by a clothspin, so I can switch names around.
I love this idea! it breaks down what you are expecting for them to do. easy to follow, going to try this! we need some chore organization around here!
Why do you dust after you vacuum m sweep or mop ? We pick up things, straighten up, dust and finally sweep, mop or vacuum.
Oh my goodness, I love this idea! Thanks for sharing. We color coordinate the kids so I could easily grab a paint chip in “their” color to use.
I have found a wonderful book “Large Family Logistics”. My daughter bought it for me for Christmas, and I love it! I have 6 children, 4 still @ home, but we are getting ready to begin our ‘adoption journey’, and we homeschool, so I wanted to get my house in order before things get crazy.
The book had some awesome ideas, including posting lists in each room, (I put them on the back of each door) of each daily chore and weekly chore. Each day, we take between 20-30 min. to deep clean each room of the house before we start school. Each afternoon when we finish school, we do our “daily chore” where each child is assigned a room to straighten. My kids love it because its broken up in small bites, and we no longer have to spend our Saturdays cleaning house!
Oh I think you just became my hero!! I’ve got the Cricut Cartridge for chores and I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it. This is PERFECT!! I can make them up inexpensively and laminate them so that they can move around! LOVE IT!!!
Thanks for sharing i definitely will be using these thanks. Looks like I will be headed to walmart.
This is a great idea. I have one small suggestion to take into consideration. Instead of taking new samples from the store for a purpose other than what they are intended for, make sure you are using old paint chip cards from a project you have finished, or ask the store for some cards of discontinued paint.
I wish I could remember where I had previously read about this debate, but the idea was that taking new ones for crafty purposes instead of painting purposes was akin to stealing from the paint companies and that they may start charging for paint samples. It was certainly food for thought for me!
Happy chore charting!
I’ve always felt uneasy about taking the new paint chips for craft purposes, too. That’s a good idea to ask for discontinued paint samples, if they ever actually have those. And a lot of us probably have old ones we could use. Thanks for bringing up this point, Mel!
Oops! I didn’t see this thread before I posted on the same thing. To me, it’s not so much stealing, as it is giving a false impression to the store and creating unnecessary work for the clerks.
The store can try to get an idea of popular colors based on what chips need to be restocked, so taking them for craft purposes skews their information.
Clerks have to restock those chips when they run out, which I’m sure is a time consuming, mind numbing process.
I saw your pin of this on pinterest and wondered what? Then I read your post and it all makes sense! What a clever idea.
LOVE this! Thanks for sharing. All our kiddos are non-readers so I think I will print out mini clip art to glue into the squares. We have wanted to do a chore chart but actually putting one together has escaped me -this will be super easy!
That’s a great idea; thanks for sharing it!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3144153526795&set=a.3144147246638.2150185.1353707005&type=3&theater My hanger system and labeled clothespins.
I really like this idea. One of your best yet! Thank you for sharing!
Oh, what a great idea! Even though I don’t have kids at home any more it will work well for me in my sewing/quilting room. One before starting project and one for after….. I am always mis-placing things…… Also, wanted to let you know that I ‘Pinned’ this to my board
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This is a really cute idea! However, I don’t think it’s quite right to take paint chips from the store if you’re not actually looking for a paint color. So if you want more than one or two, I’d suggest asking someone in the paint department if they have any leftover chips from discontinued colors. Besides, the discontinued ones are just going in the trash, so taking those actually saves something from the dump (at least for a while).
This is a great idea. I stumbled across it a few days ago and changed our current chore chart to this one! I recently implemented schedules and chore charts for my children but using a plain old dry erase board. This is much less maintenance & much cuter, too! Thank you so much for sharing.
Oh my! LOVE at first sight. I rarely comment on blogs/websites, but HAD to for this post. Chore charts for me are, well, a chore! Thank you, thank you for a great idea. Will be working on this! Love the colors, the rotating, the simplicity!!
Cute idea! My kiddos are 5, 3, & 1 so I don’t think we’re quite ready for chore cards yet. I need to figure out something though because I’m not doing a very good job at cleaning up after 5 people!
Just read this after reading your ‘how to motivate kids to clean’ post. What if the reward for having the cleanest space was to choose the paint chip card you want? Just pick in order based on scores. If cleaning toilets was on one card it could be great motivation to clean well in order to not get stick with that one!!
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