If you are like me, your week is full of school runs, kids’ extracurricular activity, running errands, cooking, helping with homework and projects, and – oh yeah – your actual day job. All this leaves little time for one of the most important aspects of family life – cleaning and chores.
A recent study by Clorox (ok, probably not the most impartial source for a cleanliness study, but still) showed that doing chores and maintaining a clean household are linked to higher levels of happiness, lower stress, and higher productivity. Sharing chores has also been linked to higher marital (and yes, sexual) satisfaction – but that’s another article.
For kids, the benefits included better study habits, higher empathy development and a higher likelihood to help others. Everyone’s lives are hectic. Chores pile up (literally with dishes and clothes). Often that means we need the kids to help us tackle the lengthy list of household tasks. However, just try to convince kids that chores are actually fun and good for them.
Making Cleaning Fun…ish
Now, if you are among the chosen few whose children put up no argument when called into duty in the war on grime, stop reading now and please leave a comment below on how you attained this mystical level in life. For the rest of you, you’ve probably struggled with how to get your kids to pitch in without massive family fights.
We found that getting our kids engaged without a battle means avoiding the classic “Because I said so!” and the new-age “You should want to do chores as a member of this family.”. I would be interested to know if this last one has actually worked for anyone…ever. Instead, we just cut to the chase and decided to use a reward system.
The challenge for us was two-fold: 1) figuring out the right reward and 2) how to structure chore time to feel less like a punishment. Turns out, making it feel less like work and more like fun was the easy part. The reward was the key.
With kids ranging in age from kindergarten to middle school, identifying one thing that would motivate all of them was a problem. Money only worked for our oldest, bonus screen time didn’t do it for our youngest – and then my wife hit on the universal motivator… candy.
Creating the Chore Game
Before you get all judgey-judgey, let me explain how “The Chore Game”, as it has become known, works:
- First – branding is important. Calling it “The Chore GAME” puts a positive spin on it and makes it sound less like work. Calling out “Hey Guys!! Time for The Chore Game” just sounds better than “Time to clean!”, “Pick up this mess!”, or “Oh My God! What IS that smell!!”
- All the chores are on strips of paper and kept in a bowl. Each person – including parents – selects a chore from the bowl. Having parents “play” shows the kids that we’re all in this together, and not just pushing stuff off onto them.
- It was important to us to break larger tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces. “Sweep the house” is daunting to a 6 or 7 year old. However, “sweep the dining room” or “sweep the stairs” feels like something they can handle. Plus, have you ever seen a 6 or 7 year old sweep a whole house and do it well? The goal here is to get stuff done – not to create more work.
- After each person completes their chosen task and it passes review, they get to have a piece of candy. We often use bite-sized Red Vine bites or maybe an M&M/Skittle/Jelly Bean (just one at a time) – nothing big, but the motivation is the same.
- When the chores are all done, we’ll divide some of the remaining treats amongst the kids for a job well done.
- We also customize the treat for seasonality and surprise the kids. Candy corn around Halloween or mini-candy canes at Christmas, for example, work great. This adds a little extra “What’s the treat going to be” excitement to the game and switches up the reward.
This particular solution isn’t for everyone, especially the use of candy as the motivator, but it works for our family. Every family is different. They keys to making it work are finding a reward that motivates everyone, getting the whole family involved and making it fun.
It’s amazing how quickly the house gets clean and how everyone feels like they worked together. You might get some sweet treats, to boot.