Household Chores Checklist - It\’s Not Magic!

By: Colleen Langenfeld

If you’re like many people, you’ve used tools like a household chores checklist to try and improve the organization in your home, but have been disappointed in the results. There can be many reasons for this, but one of the most common is believing in the magical powers of charts and checklists.

Sad to say…but there is no magic!

Chores and checklists don’t have any power to change a household on their own. It’s a little like lovingly displaying a hammer on the ground of an open lot and ‘expecting’ a house to materialize!

The real magic of a household chores checklist and related tools is in their ability to organize your own efforts towards improvement. This is most effective when you take the time to do some upfront planning to build success into the process. Done consistently and correctly, your success rate with these types of tools will skyrocket!

– Pick your chores checklist.

There are several free or fee-based household checklists available online. Do a little searching and find one you like. Remember, no matter what you choose, you’ll need to do some customization of your checklist.

Fill out the checklist for your particular household’s situation. I find this part of the process works best if you can give yourself a few days to finish it because you will keep remembering tasks you want to include. That’s good as the more complete you can be at this stage of the process, the better.

– Take a good look at what you’ve got.

With paper in hand, consider the tasks you’ve written on your chores checklist so far. Ask yourself the following.

* What supplies are needed to complete this task?

* Will double supplies be needed (one set on each floor of the home, perhaps) to be most efficient?

* Do I currently have supplies that are outdated or outmoded?

* Can this task be eliminated altogether? (For example, are you simply ‘collecting’ magazines and catalogs instead of reading them? Canceling your subscriptions means you never have to decide what to do with them after they’re in your home; the clutter is simply gone.)

The answers to these questions will enable you to have the right supplies in the right amount available when the day comes to put your plan into action.

– Organize according to age and ability.

Almost everyone in a home can help out with household chores. The trick is to match expectations with abilities. Using your checklist, determine appropriate chores for the preschoolers, elementary-aged, pre-teens and teens in your home. When you’re considering the very young members of your family, break a chore down into parts. Usually one or two of those parts will be manageable by a preschooler.

Also consider temperaments. Would your family rather have assigned chores so they know exactly what’s expected of them each and every week? Or do they prefer variety, mixing it up a little? Having a family conference at this stage is often helpful. The trick is to maintain that the only choices revolve around HOW the chores are done…not WHETHER they’re done.

After all the kids have their chores mapped out, use your household chore checklist to assign the remainder of the chores to the adults in the household. Let me be clear, I’m NOT suggesting that kids should do more chores than adults. I AM saying that often it’s easier to start by assigning lesser abilities and work your way up from there. Which means, the adults will pick up any and all slack, plus supervise, and must also shoulder the more difficult chores.

Of course, if you don’t have any children, then the adults will do all the chores. But there will be fewer bodies to pick up after, too!

– Consider the details.

Now’s the time to sniff out problems with your chore system. Take a look at what you’ve established so far and think about possible obstacles that will inevitably come up.

Household Chores Checklist - It’s Not Magic!
Household Chores Checklist - It's Not Magic!By: Colleen Langenfeld If you're like many people, you've used tools like a household chores checklist to ...

Household Chores Checklist - It’s Not Magic!
Household Chores Checklist - It's Not Magic!By: Colleen Langenfeld If you're like many people, you've used tools like a household chores checklist to ...

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If your evenings are already jam-packed, squeezing in a chores list is aiming at failure. If you’re serious about making this work, then you’ll need to consider some changes. Perhaps you can establish a thirty minute family chore time each evening right after dinner. Or make Saturday morning be clean-the-house time before everyone scatters to their activities.

The point is, take an honest look at your current lifestyle and figure out when and how these chores are going to fit in. If you don’t, that chores checklist will be disappointing you yet again.

– One more thing…

Aim for improvement, not perfection. You know what I mean. If you are looking at household chores checklists because your home is in disaster-mode right now, you cannot expect it to turn completely around in a week’s time. People just don’t work that way!

That’s why aiming for making improvements (as opposed to perfection) actually works. It’s measurable and tangible and gets everyone a little more excited about the whole process. Then you keep on aiming for incremental improvements and you help everyone build on new habits.

One day at a time.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/home_improvement/article_3202.shtml

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Heavy Spa Cover Keeping You Out In The Cold?

By: Jeff Sliger

Every week we get customers calling to order a new cover for a spa they just got for free. Spas and Hot Tubs are expensive. They run in the thousands of dollars. When you first get your new spa you use it everyday. You invite your friends over to enjoy your new toy. You go to work with a smile on your face because you know that no matter what hits you, by tonight you’ll be soaking it away.

Then why, if this is so great, would anyone end up giving it away? And as it is leaving say, “The spa works great it just needs a new cover.” I hear it all the time. To me this is equivalent to giving away your car because it needs a new set of tires. After Years of hearing these words I began to investigate the source of this change.

It happens slowly, but see if any of this sounds familiar. When you first get your spa you use it like it’s your first bicycle. It becomes a part of your regular routine. Over time though it becomes a little bit more of a struggle. The reason is that cover that came with the spa begins to get heavy. It does it so slowly that you don’t even notice. As you begin to struggle with it you might think to yourself, “I must be tired.” Eventually you’ll wait a few days between using it and when you go to use it again you realize that what was a fairly easy operation now requires two people and real effort.

What do you do? Most people get in their car and go back to the place they bought their spa from. What does the spa dealer say? “Well, yes the cover that came with the spa is our low end model. They always get saturated. But we have this new high end model that has a special wrapper, a sealed moisture barrier. Buy this one and your trouble will be gone.” You may even head home with a spa cover lifter because it all makes sense. Trouble is that even the new special cover will get heavy too. Too heavy even for the lifter.

In most cases you have had your spa for a few years by now. The struggle to get into it has outweighed the value of the stress relieved. Most commonly after a rate increase from the power company, you shut it down. You probably can’t remember the last time you were in it anyway.

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Eventually the cover caves in and you decide its time to reclaim this part of the yard. You give it away or sell it cheap just to get it out of the yard. As it is leaving with its new owner you say these words, “It works great, it just needs a new cover!”

Now if you are the benefactor of such a statement, let me give you a heads up. You too will end up in the same situation unless you find a way to break the cycle of covers that get heavy. If you are the spa owner that is just about to give up think about this, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting to get different results. Don’t let a cover be the reason you give up something you paid hard earned money for and once enjoyed so much. Look for a different kind of spa cover. I once had a lady order a new cover from me and she was excited to show it off to her neighbor that had the same heavy cover challenge. Unfortunately before she told her friend about the new type of cover she had discovered, that neighbor had punched holes in the bottom of her spa and transformed it into a very large and expensive planter. A very expensive planter, all for the want of a better spa cover.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/home_improvement/article_3164.shtml

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