If you’re like many people, you’ve used tools like a chore checklist to try to improve organization in your home, but have been disappointed with the results. There can be many reasons for this, but one of the most common is believing in the magical powers of charts and checklists.
It’s sad to say… but there is no magic!
Tasks and checklists alone have no power to change a home. It’s a bit like lovingly displaying a hammer in the ground of an open lot and ‘waiting’ for a house to materialize!
The real magic of a chore checklist and related tools is in your ability to organize your own efforts to improve. This is most effective when you take the time to plan ahead for success in the process. If done consistently and correctly, your success rate with these types of tools will skyrocket!
— Choose your task checklist.
There are several free or paid home checklists available online. Do some searching and find one you like. Remember, no matter what you choose, you’ll need to customize your checklist a bit.
Complete the checklist for your particular household situation. I think this part of the process works best if you can give yourself a few days to finish it because you will keep remembering the tasks you want to include. That’s a good thing since the more thorough you can be at this stage of the process, the better.
– Take a good look at what you have.
With paper in hand, consider the tasks you’ve written on your task checklist thus far. Ask yourself the following.
* What supplies are needed to complete this task?
* Will you need twice as many supplies (perhaps one set on each floor of the house) to be more efficient?
* Do I currently have supplies that are outdated or outdated?
* Can this task be eliminated entirely? (For example, do you just ‘collect’ magazines and catalogs instead of reading them? Canceling your subscriptions means you never have to decide what to do with them once they’re in your house; the clutter is just gone.)
The answers to these questions will allow you to have the correct supplies in the correct amount available when the day comes to put your plan into action.
— Arrange by age and ability.
Almost everyone in a household can help with chores. The trick is to match expectations with skills. Using your checklist, determine appropriate chores for the preschoolers, elementary age children, tweens, and teens in your home. When considering very young members of your family, break a task into parts. Usually one or two of those parts will be manageable by a preschooler.
Also consider temperaments. Would your family prefer to have homework assigned so they know exactly what is expected of them each week? Or do you prefer variety, mixing it up a bit? Having a family meeting at this stage is often helpful. The trick is to maintain that the only options revolve around HOW the tasks are done… not IF they are done.
After all the children have planned their chores, use your chore checklist to assign the rest of the chores to the adults in the house. Let me be clear, I am NOT suggesting that children should do more than adults. I AM saying that it is often easier to start by assigning minor skills and work your way up from there. Which means that the adults will pick up the slack, in addition to supervising, and must also take on the most difficult tasks.
Of course, if you don’t have children, the adults will do all the chores. But there will also be fewer bodies to pick up!
— Consider the details.
Now is the time to detect problems with your task system. Take a look at what you’ve established so far and think about the possible roadblocks that will inevitably arise. Who is your biggest whistleblower? Who has schedule conflicts that will make it difficult to complete their tasks?
Also consider the timing of the chore checklist. If your nights are already packed, squeezing through a to-do list is setting yourself up for failure. If you really want to make this work then you will need to consider a few changes. Maybe you can set a thirty-minute time for family chores each night right after dinner. Or make Saturday morning time to clean house before everyone disperses to their activities.
The point is, take an honest look at your current lifestyle and figure out when and how these tasks will fit together. If you don’t, that task checklist will let you down once again.
— One more thing…
Aim for improvement, not perfection. You know what I mean. If you’re looking at household chore checklists because your home is in disaster mode right now, you can’t expect a full recovery in a week. People just don’t work that way!
That’s why aiming for improvements (as opposed to perfection) really works. It’s measurable and tangible and it makes everyone a little more excited about the whole process. Then continue to aim for incremental improvements and help everyone develop new habits.
One day at a time.