If you have kids at home, you know keeping your house clean can be a challenge. Using room cards is a great tool to help everyone know exactly what needs to be done in each room to keep it clean.
We recently started a new chore chart system in our family. One of the main parts of this system is room cleaning checklist cards. Each week, a different room is assigned to each member of the family. This does a few things:
- Helps prevent burnout from doing the same chores every day.
- It teaches our kids how to do different chores around the house.
- Gives the person cleaning the room a checklist of what needs to be done.
Each room has a list of daily chores, weekly chores, and in some cases, monthly chores. By outlining exactly what needs to be done in each room, there is no question about what needs to be cleaned or straightened up. My husband and I also have assigned rooms each week and it has really helped us keep up with the daily and weekly housework as well!
We have room cleaning checklist cards for the kids own rooms, as well as the different rooms in the house. We typed up and printed out each card. My kids are 6 and 4 so the amount of work that needs to be done in their rooms is minimal:
- Make bed
- Clean up books/toys
- Clean up clothes
- Vacuum (weekly)
For the rotating room chores, we have room cards for the following areas:
- Kitchen
- Upstairs/Downstairs Living
- Upstairs Bathroom
- Laundry/Mudroom
- Master Bathroom
How to Organize the Room Cards
Thinking about how to organize your room cards will be different for each family, but one of the most important things to consider is putting them in a place that is easy to access and will be seen regularly. We have ours in a closet in our main living area. Our cards are hung on hooks under each family member’s name which makes it really easy to switch them out each week.
Another place you could put them would be in the room itself. For example, keep the bathroom room cleaning checklist card in a drawer or under the sink. The kitchen room card could be inside a cabinet door or the pantry door. Individual bedroom room cards could be hung on the back of the door or inside the closet doors.
A Few More Tips…
Laminate your room cards
Make your room cards more durable by laminating them. You could do this by using a personal laminating machine, taking them to a copy shop to be laminated, or simply using contact paper (this is what we did).
Personalize bedroom room cards
You can add a little bit of personality to each child’s room card to make it something they are more likely to want to look at it. Some ways to personalize the cards are to back the room card with their favorite color of cardstock, adding stickers, putting their name at the top, etc. Let them help decorate it if you think that will help motivate them.
Have a set schedule for weekly chores
We always do each room’s weekly chores on Saturday morning, but depending on your own family dynamic and schedules, you might need to assign a different day. It may even depend on the person. When you set a schedule for when the weekly chores will be done it keeps everything organized and each person in the family will know what’s expected of them.
