Wednesday, February 29, 2012

diy chore chart--guest post by allison @ a few sprinkles short of a sundae



i admit it openly. i am not good at making my children clean up. i don’t clean up, so i guess they figure they don’t need to either, right? but the countless number of cars and barbie parts scattered across my floor are enough to make me want to get rid of every toy in my house. every. toy.

but seeing as we, and other people, have spent money on these great little foot jabbers, it would be nice to keep them for more than week before i toss them out in a way that would make buzz lightyear tremble in fear. so as i scoured pinterest one day i came across an idea for a chore chart.

and since my 5-year-old is greatly motivated by anything quarters and dollars, i thought i could make a chore chart where the kids could earn money for doing things they should already do anyway. but whatever, don’t judge.
so here is what i made:



it really was pretty simple to make. i bought myself a shiny new cookie sheet and used my old one for this project (win/win!). i went to a local store and got yellow spray paint and sprayed that sucker down. allow it to dry a day or two before doing anything else with it, but that will give you time to make the other parts.

then i had to think of chores and how much each was worth. i will tell you, i apparently overpriced some of these things because in one day my daughter made off with $2.50 from doing all the chores. be cheap!

i got magnets and would be sticking each chore onto a magnet to put on the cookie sheet. still with me? good! i started off printing the chores out onto little circles, but then i remembered that my children can’t read yet, so i had better use pictures. then simply cut out the little circles and glue them onto the magnets (i used my xyron sticker maker, but use what you have).



since i have two children, i needed to make a side for each child. i pulled out my cricut and made their names, again using the xyron sticker maker to put adhesive on them.


simply put the names where you want them (or just one name if you are only doing this for one child – but seriously, make them all do chores). i then used bright colored duct tape to divide the areas for each child and the chores to be done. voila!

now each child can do a chore and slide the appropriate magnet over to his or her side and at the end of the day we pay them. like i said before, though, one day my daughter managed to make $2.50. my son, on the other hand, is not nearly as motivated by money and really doesn’t care about cleanliness or money.

did the chore chart save our home from the producers of hoarders being called in? not really, but it was fun to make and it has motivated the kids to help with the dishes and make their beds a little more. so i’ll call that a win!




allison is a stay-at-home mom of two, a biological daughter who is 5 and an adoptive son who is 4. she is also wife to one husband (and one is plenty, thank you very much), who is 31. when not blogging or ignoring her children’s pleas to help find their shoes again, allison can be found attempting to write novels in what little spare time she has left between facebook, twitter, pinterest, and, you know, parenting. she is the genius behind the blog “a few sprinkles short of a sundae.


3 comments:

  1. I sound like a genius here! Thanks for letting me take over for a day!

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  2. I'll pay you a million dollars to make one of those for my boys (and hand deliver it to my house).

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    Replies
    1. Amy, I would LOVE to hand deliver it. I'll accept $500k down and $500k on delivery - in person, at your door step.

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