Getting Organized :: Children & Chores

I am a stay at home mother of four children.  I hate housework, but I also hate a messy house.  It's a frustrating way to live.  And with five other people in this house with me, keeping up with the housework is a never ending task.  My husband and I have always thought that our kids should help around the house.  I want to teach them early on how to help in the kitchen to prepare food, how to pick up after themselves (this is a very hard lesson to teach and I'm still working on it with them), and the importance of everyone working together in the home.  My favorite phrase is "I'm not your maid", I feel like it's important for them to grow up not thinking that my role in life is to pick up after them.  

I think that it is important for kids of all ages to have jobs or chores around the house.  Henry was taking recyclable items out to the recycling bin at a very early age.  Sam can clean the kitchen floor with our Bissell Sweeper like nobody's business (If you don't have a Bissell Sweeper you need one!  Here's a post with my review of the sweeper).  Max and Ella are in charge of bringing in the garbage cans/recycling bins each week.  And this is just a sampling.  The kids have many tasks they are responsible for.  That's not to say our house is always clean, in fact, it's often cluttered.  We are still working out the kinks in our chore system.  I find that the biggest struggle to keeping things clean is finding the time.  My kids are great at chores, but often-times school nights are jam packed with extra curricular activities, baths, dinner, homework and such.  To help them keep track of their jobs and get them accomplished, I created Chore Charts for each child, listing their jobs each week.  They have jobs that they HAVE to do (I'm not paying them to put their dirty laundry away or keep their room tidy), and then they have extra chores they can do to earn a little bit of money each week.  And sometimes I add an extra special job in for extra money, for instance I might pay someone an extra dollar to clean all the clutter out from under the couch, or to wash the windows.  

Here's what our Chore Charts look like::

I find that these chore charts work great when I am CONSISTENT with printing them out, doling out allowance, and reminding them to get the work finished.  Right now we are in a cleaning rut, so I'm printing out the chore charts tonight and filling them out so we can get our house in shape!  I made this chore chart using Word, and you could make your own at home, so you can tailor it to your family's needs.  I like giving them allowance because it teaches them how to save money for things that they want, because Santa just doesn't bring everything on their wish lists, and we don't buy them every toy they want. Allowance is a good way for them to learn about money, savings and budgeting.  As I said though, some chores are just "expected", while other jobs can earn allowance.   

Here are some things to consider when making a list of chores for your child:

• Don't underestimate your children!  They are capable of doing many jobs around the house (see links below for age-appropriate chore ideas)
• Involve the kids in the planning, talk to them about what jobs need to be accomplished, and see if they have ideas on how to get the work done.
• Consider each child's interests, abilities and age when creating your chore chart
• Keep things structured and organized!  I find that when I use the chore charts the kids really do get their chores finished, but when I forget to print them out each week, or slack on passing out allowance then they just aren't as inspired to clean.  They need the structure of having that list in their hands.  It works for them!

Here are some samples of the chores my children do to earn allowance (above and beyond their usual daily jobs): Ella cleans the bathrooms and she vacuums as well, Sam is great with the Bissell Sweeper as I mentioned, in the kitchen and the basement.  Max is in charge of garbage, collecting each can in all the rooms, taking the garbage out, & bringing in the recycling bins each week.  And these are just a few things they can do around the house.  They have also been known to lend a hand in the kitchen...clearing the table, helping to prepare dinner, etc.  I really want them to know their way around the kitchen and be able to help prepare meals.  I think that working on chores around the house and helping in the kitchen will really help them in the long run. 
Here's one of the "extra jobs"...Ella dusting off the light fixture in the dining room:

Here's a few great resources about getting your children involved with chores around the house:
Need to clean the house in a hurry?  Try this Cleaning Game I did with the kids
Age Appropriate Chores for Kids from the Happy Housewife
A Magnetic Chore Chart for Children on Etsy
An article on WebMD about Family Chores

I'm curious...do your children do chores around the house?  Do you pay them allowance? 
 

ps..all ECards were found here and there on the internet, visit someecards.com for more laughs!

Creating a Family Travel Guide

When Michael and I were in college we spent many weekends at the Red River Gorge, and even after we got married we still went camping pretty regularly.  But once we started having kids camping got a bit complicated, and we started staying in cabins and not tent camping as much as we used to "back in the day".  Now that the kids are getting older we've decided it's time to start tent camping again.  Last Fall we decided that we are going to take the kids to our favorite place to camp, the Red River Gorge at least once a year for a camping trip.  Read all about our first camping trip with all four kids in this post.

The Gorge is breathtakingly beautiful, and there are more paths, trails, and sites to see than one can count.  We have several trail guides for the Red River Gorge that we use when we go camping and hiking, but we decided to make our own family Guide Book for the Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge area for our future trips.  This book is something that we can continue to add to over the years, and take with us each year to remember the paths we hiked, the places we camped, and the sites we saw.  I'm hoping this book will end up being a family treasure as we add to it each year.

Here's a bit more about how we made our book:
I bought a simple (large) journal at Michael's Craft store, and printed out many pictures from our trips, along with labels to label each hike/page.  Then we decided how to organize the book.  We have sections for hikes we take, places we stay, and what we ate.  I started each page with a title and a few pictures, then we all write notes about the hike.  It was interesting to see what the kids had to say about our trip.  And I can't wait to add to this each year and see how it evolves as the kids get older!

Here are some pictures of our Red River Gorge Travel Guide:
**Click on photos to see larger versions of them.

For some of the pages I copied text from our official trail guide books, just so we could remember exactly which trail we took on each trip. 

Do you have a place your family likes to travel to on a regular basis?  Or perhaps you take a different road trip or vacation each year?  You should consider making a family travel guide with your kids, it's a great learning experience!

And if you are looking for things to cook on your camping trip see this Menu Planning Post

Tips & Ideas for Peaceful Homework Time

So often it seems that homework is a struggle in our house.  Sometimes it's a child who would rather be doing anything other than the assignment, or sometimes it's simply a matter of a concept not clicking in their little heads yet.  And I get it, I never cared for homework either....just ask my mom.  So we've worked hard to make homework time a peaceful time, and even though we still have our moments (Mama + Math = Misery), for the most part homework time looks like this at our house....

Here are some ways we've made homework time more peaceful in our house:
** Find everyone their own space.  I've found that my boys cannot be around each other while working, and so we separate them, usually into two different rooms.  And often-times I just have to let them work where they are comfortable.  One night I found Sam doing his work while lying on the kitchen floor...whatever works!  And Max likes to use a clipboard and sit on the floor instead of at the table. 
** Find quiet work for EVERYONE to do during homework time (even Henry!).  Often times I will sit and pay bills while the kids work, so they see that everyone has important things that have to be done.  And if one of the kids does not have homework they have to find something else quiet to do like reading a book.  Even Henry will get out a notebook and paper and "work" during homework time.
**  Turn everything OFF.  Phones, Music, TV, Computer...No distractions!
** Try to stick to the same time every night for homework.  This can be a tough one to do, but can help because children need schedules, routines and predictability.  I find that my kids need a break when they come home from school just to veg or play, so we do homework after dinner. 
** Fit homework in your schedule if possible.  My kids get homework packets each week, so if I know we are going to have a busy week I try to finish up alot of their packet over the weekend. 
** Don't wait until the last minute.  Need I say more?  This is a recipe for disaster.
** Keep all the tools they need for homework handy.  We have an "art cabinet" in the dining room, and it has crayons, pencils, scissors, paper, etc, everything they need to do their homework.  I also keep all of their homework (except Ella who does hers in her room) in the same place in the dining room, so they know where to find it. 
**Take a TIME OUT if you need to.  Sometimes homework becomes an emotional battle.  When tears are shed I call a time out.  Last night I sent one child to their room to chill, and I went to my room for a breather.  We came back five minutes later and all of a sudden the homework made sense to the child, the tears were gone, and the homework was finished in less than ten minutes.  Sometimes you just need to take a break and then have a fresh look at things.

I hope these homework time tips help you!  I have found that doing these things I listed has helped to make homework time in our house a little less stressful.  I notice when I don't do these things that homework time is more of a chore and tends to get chaotic and crazy. 

Here's another great resource, a blog post from the Kenton County Library about how to balance school work.  They have some great ideas for using the library as a tool when working on homework!

Do you have any homework tips to share?

Menu Plan Monday ~ September 17

Have I mentioned before how great Menu Planning is?  I feel like when I talk about it I get so excited that people think I'm trying to get them to join a cult.  If you join the Menu Plan cult though it would be the best thing you ever did for you and your family.  I am telling you what...Menu Planning saves me so much time and anxiety.  I'm not saying I don't get stressed out at dinner time, especially when the kids are fighting or don't want to work on their homework...but the actual meal prep isn't usually stressful.  I spend time each Sunday clipping coupons, going through recipes and making grocery lists.  I use my calendar for the week to determine our meals.  Hmmmm, Tuesday looks crazy...scouts, Market Day pickup, and possibly another extracurricular...better plan on using the slow cooker that day.  And then when dinnertime rolls around on that crazy Tuesday night I am READY.  There are still those occasional days where I just throw in the towel and opt for dinner at a restaurant.  These are now rare treats though instead of a regular thing.  We used to eat out several times a week.  Bad for our checkbook and bad for our health.  Ok, enough of the "drink the menu planning koolaid" speech...here's my menu from last week.  We had some great dishes..follow the links so you can try the recipes yourself.  And follow along on my "Recipes I Love" board on Pinterest to see all of our favorites.  And for the most menu-planning inspiration in one place check out OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday link up!

Last Week's Dinners:
Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala (served with Naan, Basmati Rice and Pakoras - all from Trader Joe's)
Sausage & Fennel Pasta Bake
Brinner : Griddle Cakes, Bacon and Hashbrowns
Slow Cooker Philly Cheesesteaks with Onion Rings
Pizza & Salad (Kashi Mediterranean - yum!)
Burgundy Ribs with Baked Potatoes

We also had a Harry Potter Party last week which was quite fun.  And as added extras I made Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Pumpkin Muffins & Peacho de Gallo last week!!!  The muffins are great for lunches, I just keep them in the freezer and pop them in their lunchboxes in the morning.  The kids love them for dessert!  And the salsa with the peach added to it is soooo yummy!

Archiving

I’m a bit of a pack rat. I don’t deny this. I’m a collector, a keeper, a saver, and I’m destined to be one of those people who will grow old and when I die you will enter my house and find mazes consisting of old newspapers and dusty boxes. But probably no cats. But to make up for my packratishness, I’ve developed ways to organize my collections to keep things in order and condensed. I’ve told you about how I organize all of our mementos (tickets to shows, wedding invites, etc), but I also have stacks and stacks of newspapers in the basement. Every time I see a story in the paper I want to save (usually because it is about an event I attended, or spotlights a family member or friend) I would put the newspaper in a stack in the basement instead of just clipping the story. These stacks are not high enough o create mazes yet, but there’s enough of them to make my inner-organizer a bit twitchy. So I decided to do something about this chaos.

Before I begin, let me give you a little bit of background. I come by this tendancy to collect newspaper articles naturally…it’s in my genes. You see my Nana used to sit in this couch seen to the right and go through the papers each and every day and clip any article that she thought someone in her family (or one of her friends) would be interested in. If there was ever an article about parenting or early childhood education that article would be clipped and my name would go on the top of it. She clipped stories about my siblings & cousins when they made the paper for sports activities. She clipped every single story about GE and gave it to Michael. Sometimes she would clip recipes for me, or stories about fun places to take the kids in our area. I often wondered what her paper must have looked like after she was finished clipping for the day. It must have looked rather like paper swiss cheese. Once she clipped these stories and added names to them she would put them in a beautiful china bowl that sat on a table by her front door. And every time someone would visit her house they would know to look in the bowl for clippings and other miscellaneous items she had left there for them.

I think it’s only fitting that when I took a weekend to sort through all of my newspapers that this picture of my Nana slipped out from between the papers:

I decided the best way to preserve these articles that I wanted to save was in a scrapbook format, so I cut each article out, taking care to clip the date when I could, and the title of the paper it was in, and then I used a scrapbooking adhesive to safely adhere the articles to papers that I put into the album. I know, I know, I could have just kept them all in a manilla folder, but I’m addicted to scrapbooking, so they are in an album.

We were going away to the cabin for the weekend, and I wanted to do something productive (cleaning out clutter from my basement) but fun (again, I love scrapping). So I thought this would be a perfectly relaxing activity for me while we were away, and I was right…it was nice to be on vacation yet cross a project off my list.

And I found so many treasures while digging through these papers.  Here's a few snippets...

My father in law atop a bridge...

My beloved BopBop

A story about my Nana connecting with our Irish cousins

If papers were still 35cents I'd still be a daily subscriber

To see more of my posts about organizing around the house click here.

the "special" book box

in our home we have a bookshelf or container to store reading materials in every single room.  sometimes two shelves in one room.  we have ALOT of books...books of all sorts.  in our living room, even though we have two bookshelves we also have a "special" book basket that holds the kids' library books, and any seasonal books we might have.  i like to pull out special books throughout the year, or go to the library to get special books pertaining to the season, holiday, or any other special event going on in our lives.  right now we have a big wooden box under the tree filled with all of our christmas books.  the kids get so excited about whatever seasonal books we have out, and it encourages them to pick them up and read because they are right there at their level in plain sight, and often times they are new titles that they have not read before, or haven't read in a long time.

this isn't just a handy thing to do for seasons & holidays, but for any special topic of interest that your kids are curious about.  this summer we took the kids to see the cleopatra exhibit at the cincinnati museum center, and it kindled an obsession with all things egyptian for a while, so our box was full of books about mummies, pyramids, etc.  and then after egypt their focus was on severe weather, so we stocked up on books about tornadoes, lightning and storms at our local library. 

i came up with this idea when i was teaching preschool, because we would rotate the books we had on our shelves and the kids seemed to love the variety and new titles.  

so get out to your local library and stock up on books that will satisfy your children's curiosities or tell them more about the celebrations you are attending.  and consider a book box of your own, the novelty of the book box might get your kids more excited about reading! 

Getting Organized :: Binders!

This summer I am doing my best to take steps to get more organized...in every area of our lives. Except cleaning. Still waiting on a house elf for that one. Some of the changes I'm making are huge, some are tiny, but in the end, they are all helping to make our lives feel a little less chaotic. I want to share my ideas with you over the summer, in the hopes that you will find inspiration for organizing, or perhaps share some organizing ideas with me in the comments section!


You may have noticed from some of my previous organizing posts, but I am OBSESSED with binders.  They can serve so many purposes when it comes to staying organized.  Here's a list of ways I utilize binders in our house:

Recipe Binder ~ I wrote an entire post about my recipe binder a while back, and I still love it dearly.
Sewing & Crocheting ~ I use a pretty binder I found at Target to keep my sewing & crocheting patterns organized.  I have sections for projects I've done, projects I'm working on, and projects I can't wait to try.  The binder is 90% sewing & crocheting, but I've thrown a few other miscellanious ideas & tutorials into it as well.
Kids' Schoolwork ~ I use binders to collect the kids' schoolwork that I want to save.  I don't save every single thing they do at school, but special stories they wrote, big spelling tests, awards, cool art projects, etc.  It's just a sampling of their school-year.  I store the binders on a shelf in the basement closet for when they are older.  So far I've been able to fit 2 school years into one binder (1.5 inch). 
Legos ~ I bought a HUGE binder to organize the kids' HUGE collection of Lego Instruction booklets.  Read all about it here.
Teaching Resources ~ I taught preschool for years, and over time I've collected lots of lesson plans, templates, clip art, forms, etc.  I am starting to use binders to organize all of this stuff for when I go back to teaching in the future.
Instruction Manuals ~ I use another HUGE binder to organize all of our various owners manuals for all of the appliances in our home.  I divide up into sections (kitchen, kids stuff, outside equipment, etc).  This is super helpful when something breaks and we need to reference the manual.
Home Organization ~ I use this binder every single day, and it keeps our family moving in an organized manner.  Read more about it here.  I highly recommend making a binder like this if you are feeling like your life is kind of chaotic.

And here's a couple binders that are on my wishlist:  Life.doc and Valuables.doc

Do you use binders to keep organized?  Please share your ideas!

Getting Organized :: Couponing! (GIVEAWAY CLOSED)

This summer I am doing my best to take steps to get more organized...in every area of our lives. Except cleaning. Still waiting on a house elf for that one. Some of the changes I'm making are huge, some are tiny, but in the end, they are all helping to make our lives feel a little less chaotic. I want to share my ideas with you over the summer, in the hopes that you will find inspiration for organizing, or perhaps share some organizing ideas with me in the comments section!

Coupon Organizer Giveaway is CLOSED ~ The Winner is: Angela Endicott, who wrote: "I'm tired of carrying my coupons in envelopes that fall apart!! Plus I am a fan of saving money!!"
Angela, email me at Katie(at)Cards-by-Katie(dot)com to claim your prize! 
Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway, stay tuned to the little things...more giveaways are in the works!  And if you still want to purchase a coupons organizer from Grandma's Little Lilly Etsy Shop use the code lilly30 and she will give you a 2.00 discount on your order! I think I might pick up another organizer as a gift.  And her items are already very reasonably priced, so this is quite a treat to have a discount as well :)






I have been "couponing" for several years now, but please note, I use that term loosely.  I am not a Coupon Queen by any means.  And I don't have anything to teach you about couponing.  I have friends that are amazing at collecting coupons, shopping sales, stocking up on cheap items to use later, matching coupons, stacking coupons, etc.  I admire them, and I try to learn nuggets of wisdom from them.  But I am just a rookie.  And that's ok with me.  I want to save a little money, but I still have much to learn.  And I need to get better about couponing on a regular basis.  I go through slumps where I just don't make the time to do it.  And I regret that.  So I'm giving my coupon-collecting ways a makeover, and I hope to do a better job of staying on top of things to save a few cents. 

When I started couponing I used a binder with baseball card holders to organize my coupons (see picture above), and this was great.  But lately it just hasn't been what I've wanted.  I wanted to downsize. 

I searched Etsy.com and came upon Grandma's Little Lilly shop.  She has a HUGE selection of these adorable cloth coupon organizers.  They are small, made with fun fabrics, and when they are closed they look like a little clutch purse.  I love that I can throw this in my purse...and BONUS...it attaches to the back of the cart!  Rhonda makes all of these coupon organizers herself, using an original design that her mother created, and she makes these organizers to continue her mother's legacy.  I love that sweet story behind them!

Here's more info about the organizer from the Etsy shop description:

 ♥ 26 blank dividers

♥ 80 grocery labels, 40 budget receipt labels 16 department store labels and 24 blank labels a total of 160 labels!

♥ attaches to your shopping cart for easy use and EASY access to your coupons!

♥ Endless possibilities for you to organizer it your way. Aisle by aisle, alphabetical order, store by store, and you can change it around when you want to fit your needs.

♥ Stylish fabrics to choose from

♥ never falls apart (holds up for many years)

♥ holds 100’s of coupons

I loved this organizer so much that I emailed Rhonda from Grandma's Little Lilly shop and asked her if she wanted to collaborate for a giveaway, and she agreed!  I am so excited to get to share one of these cute coupon organizers with one of my readers.  And I have been thinking, even if you are a coupon-er using a binder, you could still use this cloth organizer to organize your coupons for your non-grocery store coupons...Walgreens, Kohls, Target, etc.  It has so many possible uses!

 

Coupon Organizer Giveaway

The winner of this giveaway will receive one regular sized coupon organizer from Grandma's Little Lilly Etsy shop.  Entering is quite easy, see details below.  And I'm going to give you several chances to win.  A few important things to remember:  BE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION, and also leave a separate comment for each entry in the contest.

 

How to enter:

* Leave a comment below telling me why you want to win this coupon organizer. 

*  Show us some love:  Head over to Grandma's Little Lilly facebook page & the little things blog facebook page and click the "LIKE" button.  Leave another comment telling me you did so!

*  Share this giveaway with your friends, and the leave yet another comment below telling me how you spread the word.

 

A winner will be chosen on Friday, July 29th at 2pm using Random.org.  I will announce the winner on the blog, and if you have left contact information I will attempt to contact you.  The winner has 48 hours to reply or another winner will be chosen.

 

AND..as an added BONUS...I have a discount code, in case you would like to purchase one of these organizers for someone else, or for yourself.  I think they'd make great gifts!   Use the code lilly30 and she will give you a 2.00 discount on your order!  And her items are already very reasonably priced, so this is quite a treat to have a discount as well :)

Getting Organized :: CleanMama Printables

This summer I am doing my best to take steps to get more organized...in every area of our lives. Except cleaning. Still waiting on a house elf for that one. Some of the changes I'm making are huge, some are tiny, but in the end, they are all helping to make our lives feel a little less chaotic. I want to share my ideas with you over the summer, in the hopes that you will find inspiration for organizing, or perhaps share some organizing ideas with me in the comments section!

This week I want to highlight an etsy shop that can help you get organized in so many areas of your life.  I have already posted about my Household Organization Binder.  This binder has been a lifesaver for me!  I've since added to it, with pages from another seller on etsy, CleanMamaPrintables.  I stumbled upon this very helpful etsy shop while looking for a way to organize my blog.  She has a HUGE variety of organizational forms you can purchase in PDF format.  I bought the Blogging Kit to help me organize my thoughts for the blog.  I need handwritten lists for everything, even blogging.  It's been great, I've been able to jot down every blog idea I have, so no more forgetting what I wanted to post about.   

If you are a blogger who feels a bit scattered like myself,  you should consider using these forms to get your act together.   There are kits for cleaning, bill-paying, grocery shopping, fitness & weight loss, organizing for the holidays/special occasions, putting together all of your family's information, vacation planning, and much more!  Just typing this makes me want to go put a few in my cart.  And if you are just starting out in getting organized, or you want a fresh start in how you stay organized, she has a Starter Kit which consists of 39 documents, or you can purchase several sets together to get a lower rate. 

Getting Organized :: Lego Instruction Handbook

This summer I am doing my best to take steps to get more organized...in every area of our lives.  Except cleaning.  Still waiting on a house elf for that one.  Some of the changes I'm making are huge, some are tiny, but in the end, they are all helping to make our lives feel a little less chaotic.  I want to share my ideas with you over the summer, in the hopes that you will find inspiration for organizing, or perhaps share some organizing ideas with me in the comments section! 

This week's organizing project is a small one.  I have several Lego-fanatics living in my home.  And with Lego kits come instructions.  I cannot bear to throw them away, because I think that the kids may want to re-build their sets someday.  So I save them.  All of them.  Until today they were crammed on a shelf in the basement.

Messy.  Messy.  Messy.  I know, it shouldn't have bothered me, because it's tucked away in the basement, but every time I looked at this mess I itched to organize it.  Though I must say, the seperate kits are organized neatly into recycled deli meat containers.  This is a great way to store them and keep the pieces safe!  So in order to bring order to the manuals I decided to make a "Lego Handbook". 

I bought a big binder and made a cute little front cover, using stickers from a cool Lego scrapbooking kit I bought on Amazon.  I gathered all of their instructions together:

And I stuck them all in various sized page-protectors.

I put the larger instructions into 8.5x11 plastic page protectors

I used some of my recipe card protectors for the mid-sized instruction books.

I used baseball card protectors are perfect for the mini-instructions.  I had these on hand from my coupon binder, they are also good for that too.  I'm in the midst of a coupon organizing switch though, more on that soon ;)

So there you have it, our new "Lego Handbook".  It's all neat and pretty, and user-friendly.  The kids can find whatever instructions they need without weeding through a huge pile.  My next task is to seperate the binder by category (Star Wars, Bionicle, City, etc). 

And my shelf looks better too.  (forgive poor photo quality, I'm in my dark and gloomy basement closet)

What are your secrets tips for keeping your kids Legos, or any other toys, organized?