**This conversation is brought to you by Merry Maids. All opinions are my own. #APlusCleaning #ad**
The two longest weeks of the year are upon me. It is two weeks until the start of the school year here and chaos has commenced. While we already have *most* of our school supplies, back packs and lunch pails, we are lacking back to school clothes, shoes, socks and more. In the midst of all of the shopping that is about to happen with three girls in school, I still have work and the start of the busiest part of the year for me, the dogs to take care of, the gym to hit, the carpool to set up and more. Not to mention paying the bills, taking care of the house and finding 10 minutes in the day for myself! With the busy back to school season starting, I am trying to come up with ways to make sure that the house does not become a bigger mess than it has to be. Because even if you have a quality housekeeping service like Merry Maids, you still have to maintain order every day. My kids are OK about helping out but the ‘chore’ situation has sort of grown stale. They need some variety in their day to day so I came up with a super easy DIY Chore Jar. Since I run a Team Player type of house – where we all work together to maintain the house – I think enhancing that with some variety is a good thing.
Merry Maids knows that back to school is one of the busiest for any parent. Using them to help keep your home clean year round is a great thing. I have said it before and I will say it again. Any busy home in America needs a housekeeping company to help out. We are all just too busy to spend all day Saturday cleaning toilets anymore. It is a great service that I could not live without!
In addition, Merry Maids believes that back-to- school is the perfect time for parents to shift gears and reorganize. They are giving parents an “Education in Organization” to help ease back into the school year routine. Are you a Neat Freak, a Closet Stasher, a Busy Bee, a Summer Straggler or a Team Player?
I am a big believer in my girls and I being Team Players. It takes all of us to maintain the household chores. However, we have not changed up the ‘chore chart’ in a while. So I grabbed a mason jar, put a sticker on the top that say ‘Pick a Chore’, added each chore in and put the top back on. Now, on Sunday evenings, the girls will pick a chore from the jar and that will be their responsibility for the week!
Everything from folding and putting away a load of laundry a day to helping me with the dishes is in the jar. If they do their chore all week without being bugged about it, they will earn $5 each. If they don’t, they can try again the next week on a new chore. If the kids want to take on even more chores, they can choose more than one from the jar and earn an additional $2.50 per week for each extra chore.
Their regular responsibilities that just come with living here, like keeping their rooms clean and picking up after them selves, are not included in the jar. But the ‘extra’ chores are!
If you are a Neat Freak you can premake the entire week of lunches on Sunday afternoon and have the kids grab one on the way out of the house. Or send glue and glitter in baggies in their backpacks to prevent spilling.
If you are more of a Closet Stasher, use bins in those closets to throw things in, and then have the kids help organize them once a week.
If you are more of a Busy Bee, which I am very close to being, you can have the kids help with chores while dinner is cooking or have them do your mutli-tasking of folding laundry and vacuuming at the same time!
If you are a Summer Straggler – which we all can relate to, right? – have your kids make the back to school list, clean out their drawers and make the list of ‘things to do’. Check off one at a time and hire Merry Maids to clean your house while you are handing everything else!
Whatever personality you are, and we all know that personality changes over time, Merry Maids can make your life easier by doing the tough stuff. There is no better feeling than walking into my house after my housekeepers have been here and knowing that the floors are mopped, the blinds dusted and the aroma of clean means that every surface is clean! I really believe every mom should have a housekeeper!
How are you prepping for back to school?
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