Well, my friends, my 31 days are officially up tomorrow…and at this point I’ve made it through 27 of the 31 “spaces”. While the perfectionist in me is tempted to be disappointed, the considerably larger portion of 
me that has grown to be more realistic amidst the chaos of parenting… is quite thrilled, actually.
{knuckle bumps}
While there is still plenty to rearrange, simplify and purge, I got a tremendous head-start on the process of reducing our house clutter over the past month. My mum and I hosted a rather lonely garage sale over the weekend, and despite the lack of traffic, we made $170 between us and were still left with a massive amount of residual crap. So we plan to do the garage sale hoedown again in August. And I’m utterly exhausted at the mere thought of this plan.
But we press onward.
For the crap. must. go.
Let’s hear it for {craptastic} purging!
And, as all wise mothers have no doubt learned and capitalized on, having your loin-fruit join in the daily decluttering process is part of the fun.
In the midst of the 31 days, I revamped my kidlet’s responsibility charts. We’re all about empowering them to take responsibility for their rooms and their stuff, along with doing their part to contribute to making our household run smoothly. It’s all about teamwork. Some call it child labor, we call it smart parenting.
And apart from the developmental and personal growth benefits {you know, the important stuff like raising hard-working, responsible human beings}, my kids actually happen to enjoy – even compete – to get things done and scribble little squiggles on their charts. I think we’re going to try stickers next week.
Want one too? 
You get an even cooler edition seeing, in my impatience excitement, I printed and laminated it before I thought to add the finishing touches…you know, like separating lines between the days {duh!} and photo spots. I’m impulsive like that. Pray for me.
The chart is pretty flexible, depending on how you interpret the little images. We use the dishes graphic to mean putting clean dishes away and helping to load the dishwasher. Then there’s making their beds and making sure their clothes are put away {clean ones in closets, dirty ones in laundry baskets}. You could simplify this for younger children to mean…eating breakfast {first pic), and getting dressed {third pic}.
Then there’s brushing teeth & hair…and the fifth “mystery” one is the most ambiguous of all. I currently use it to represent their helping in folding towels & laundry. In the future, the image will represent books, to mark off when homework has been done. Smart, eh? Hmm mmm!
And then there’s the picking up toys column on the right. Easy peasy!
I’m sure I’ll play with and tweak this chart further, but until then…here you go…give it a whirl!
Click…save…print. Insert photo of smiling mug. And get your family groovin’!
{badda bing, badda boom}
*As always, please note that this is exclusively for personal use and is NOT to be reprinted for resale purposes. Feel free to share the link, pin it, or head over to Facebook and visit Simply Bloom.
