Shannon over at Rocks in My Dryer has a neat idea for tip-sharing, and I finally thought of something, so I'm going to participate this week. :)
My secret weapon of keeping house is a recipe box filled with 3x5 cards. Every single housekeeping chore I can think of is written on a little card. White cards for Monthly (or less frequent) chores, yellow cards for Weekly chores, and blue cards for Daily chores. There are dividers for months and days of the month. Then when I've done a chore, it simply gets re-filed in the appropriate slot and I can forget about it until it comes up again.
Here's the beauty of the system: I never have to think about what I ought to have cleaned/be cleaning/clean next week. Each day I check my handy-dandy card box, and the day's chores are there in front of me.
Obviously, I don't always use this system perfectly. There are days when only the blue cards get done, and there are days when even those don't all get done! Such is life. But I don't have to worry about it, or try to hold everything I haven't done yet in my head because I know that that little yellow card will come up again next week, and maybe next week I'll have more energy.
This has been a life-saver as I've adjusted to keeping house with a newborn, then a toddler, and now as I'm pregnant with no energy and (evidently) no extra brain cells to spend on remembering to change the sheets or scrub the shower. :)
3 comments:
I've had making a chore box similar to yours on my to-do list for months. I think I should use your post as motivation to do it!
This is a great idea that I haven't heard before. I love color coding and lists and things. Thanks!
Emily, this is amazing -- this brought back the memories of our chore cards as kids very vividly for me! I had a pink card for every day chores, and I even remember how it went! "Make bed, get dressed, pick up room, brush teeth, comb hair, hug Mom!" And then our "white cards" as we called them... I had almost forgotten about those chores. :)
Post a Comment