Organizing is Just Another Chore

A trip to the store with the upscale cardboard boxes and frilly coat hangers was supposed to inspire me to get organized. It didn’t work. Not even the expandable spice rack tempted me.

We do at least have a way of dealing with dreaded household chores. Eight of the chores that ought to be done weekly in a civilized household get divvied up. Two chores per week shouldn’t be too much to gripe about. We rotate, so no one gets stuck scrubbing toilets more than once a month.

To help keep track of whose turn it is to do what, we write the tasks on a dry erase board. Sure, it sounds a little stringent, but it helps keep peace. Under each of our names is plenty of leftover space to indicate whether we’ve done our chores for the week.

There’s been some evolution in how we mark off our completed chores. In the beginning, a checkmark or a simple ‘x’ sufficed. Things have changed. Let’s take a look at this week’s chart.

Here’s how my husband filled in his space:

Two little piggies…one for each chore! Don’t they look jaunty? I’ll bet that’s because they don’t have to live in a pig sty.

Now here’s my entry:

Oh, yes, you can tell who the artist is in this house. Those are supposed to be mice. I think the cleaning fumes got to me.

Moving on to my daughter’s space:

Wait a minute. I know she did her chores – I saw her sashaying about with a bottle of window cleaner. I hope she put more effort into the chores then she did in checking them off.

And finally, my son’s input:

I think he has some issues he’d like to take up with the management.