Chore calendar

[Deleted]

Ok. So, I finally finished making a chore calendar this weekend.

It has a lot on it. I have separate calendars for cooking, schoolwork, work, and activity appts, etc.

But, I made one that has almost all our "chores" indoor outdoor, daily, monthly, seasonally, annually, etc on it.

Now we'll see if my family can pull it together with me to make use of it, lol.

It's reusable since I just used months and dates in order with no association of which weekday or weekend day each date fell on. Then, I figure we can just tweak things as it goes for somethings as long as we try to get them done in the five day chunks of work I have on each page.

There's just a lot that my kids are starting to be able to do to help out. But, they don't always know what needs doing to keep up. And, the guys can get list "down the rabbit hole" with projects which sometimes leads to them just running from fire to fire to keep up.

Case in point, our pellet stove had to be worked on tonight because we overlooked a part that needed cleaning, and although it was cleaned thus season, no one could remember when.

[manygoatsnmore]

I'll be watching to see how you do with this. It sounds like a good plan.

[Melissa]

When mine were all home, we had a rotating system where each morning and evening they had a different role. My assignments were- Kitchen, Animals, Inside Helper, and Outside Helper. Very general, but it worked so well. The Kitchen and Animal people pretty much knew what to do. The Helpers did whatever I needed done at the time. The Outside Helper would get in firewood/kindling, sweep the porch, do weeding etc... The inside helper would do a few house chores. Wish I still had all that help! Now I have to do everything!!! lol

[Maura]

Our chore rotation was also much easier. Six jobs, one for each child. Downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom, living and dining room, feed the dog, hallways and stairs, something else. For the youngest ones, I did the job first (unknown to them), then they had just a couple of minutes of work to do. Each Monday the job rotated. Dishes were rotated by day, only the three oldest did dishes. This was when I was living with my sister, she had five kids and I had one.

[Deleted]

Well, we're bumping along with things, and kind of have a decent start with the chores being calendared.

One of my frustrations is trying to manage my dad. I love him dearly. But, his time management skills are not good, and its a strain sometimes. I kind of really need to be on my a-game most always to keep us rolling along with everything.

Dad's a wonderful guy and wicked smart. But, his age is catching up with him, mentally and physically and it really can throw a hitch in my giddyup sometimes.

Hubby's got some physical health issues that are really challenging him, so that has to be managed too.

And, it takes a lot of effort for me personally to just stay on track with everybody. I guess I'm sort of the designated planner.

The projects outside my list if what we need to keep up with that are one time or rare projects are what get me.

Dad offered to do the rain gutters, that needed replacing. Really was a blessing. But, his expectation was it would take a weekend. We're now about ten days into it, and the ten days are randomly spread over about six weeks. Too hectic for me.

Sometimes he acknowledged his expectations are just waayyy off. So that's progress, but I just haven't figured out how to get us to work together better to manage that issue.....hopefully we'll keep improving at it. He could do this stuff way better and faster 20-40 years ago. Just praying we find the balance to recognizing we really need to plan these projects to be done at a more realistic speed.

As a plus, we at least have less going on at once now and that's a real improvement. I love him a lot, and he's not a bad guy, just is having to learn to grow old gracefully. I pray maybe at least I'm learning things I hope I'll remember as I age to make things a little less distressing for my kiddos.