Chores, Checklists, Children

Learn it from me by threeundertwo related [litandlaundry.blogspot.com]

I'm a dyed in the wool list maker. I have lists of lists on my pda. I love making Excel files and highlighting boxes and sorting. It probably wont come as a surprise that I used to work in data collection.

So I have tried to tackle every challenge around this house with my number one favorite tool -- lists.

Take housework and clutter control for example. I've thrown lists at these people every which way from Sunday but do they clean up after themselves? Can it really be so hard to put a water glass in the dishwasher? Do I have to put that on a list too? They cringe when they see me grinning with my latest printout in my hands. The current master housework list is three pages long. Initial the chores you get done please, and you need to do at least one from column A and three from column B. Isn't this fun?

My most successful list was called "Chores for Food." I am not kidding. In order to get three small kids out the door in the morning I had to make a spreadsheet. Days of the week across the top, chores down the side, separate page for each kid. All three lists taped to the sliding glass door in the dining room, with a pencil on a string taped right next to each. The chores were grouped by time period. They had 6 things to get done before breakfast. Hard things, like "comb your hair." Can you smell my desperation? It was lists or nag. The faster they got them done, the sooner they ate. Ditto lunch, dinner, etc. They got allowance based on how complete their lists were. They worked beautifully.

Then I added schedules to the lists. "Pack library books" and "Pack piano music" only showed up once a week, so the got highlighted, and the rest of the days got x's on that line. The kids figured this system out too, although they'd remember library books and leave their lunch on the counter.

The list kept morphing into a product of my wishful thinking. Towards the bottom, between dinner and bedtime story, they had to check off "clear plate and cup" "clothes into hamper" "brush and floss" "pray" and "in bed on time." Caught the problem here? If they were in bed on time, they weren't going to be in the dining room checking off the checklist. So they'd check it off the next morning. And I trusted them.

It didn't take them long to catch on that mom was trusting them to be honest on their lists. Individual x's turned into lines with arrows going down the page. My son just blacked out big columns of boxes. The system deteriorated. But by that point they were old enough to remember things like brushing their teeth, if not flossing.

Before you accuse me of pure evil or OCD, let me just reveal what I found in each of the kids rooms recently.

They've made their own checklists. David Allen would be proud.