Tidy Home Rules

I am naturally creative, full of ideas, and crafty. I like to go from one project to the next. Doing so makes me happy. However, as a mom, you learn pretty quickly that if things aren't tidied up life is chaotic! I also realized that it is not fair that I do everything for my kids. They have daily and weekly chores, but I wanted to create some rules that would help enforce just keeping on top of things in general.

Since cleaning and organizing doesn't come automatically to me, I have to read blogs written by fabulous women for whom cleaning is one of their natural gifts. After reading a few blogs, I picked and chose some rules that I thought would best fit our family. 

And, of course, I needed to make a chart to make it official.

Here are the rules:

1. Do dishes immediately after each meal.
Game changer. Seriously. This probably seems pretty obvious to normal people, but to me it was a revelation. I would usually wait and do it all at night. Doing the dishes throughout the day makes life so much easier, and cleaner. There is a reason this is rule #1!

2. No clothes on the floor.
I have to enforce this rule for myself as well as with the kids!

3. When you are done with something, put it away.
Again, probably seems obvious, but there is this strange tendency to think you can always do this sort of thing later.

4. One mess at a time.
Don’t make a new mess, untill you cleaned up the first one.

5. End of day clean up.
My favorite rule is #5. Together with the kids we negotiated that we will do the clean-up while listening to music and that there will be some sort of treat afterwards as a reward. It makes it fun.

On display.





I designed a simple poster to display in the home with the rules. I had it printed out and brought it home. My husband and I sat down with the kids and explained the meaning and importance of each rule. The kids seemed to understand and even a little excited about it

If they break one of the rules, I can say, go check Tidy Home Rule #3. Which usually results in them running to put away their shoes or backpack.  

I have included a link to download the chart. If you want to change the color, it is so simple. Open in photoshop go to >image >adjustments> hue/saturation. Click on the "hue" slider and adjust it back and forth until it is the color you want. Then go ahead and save it and get it printed

Print as an 8x10 and then trim off the bottom.

Tidy Rules chart download

I hope this might help someone. Let me know if you try this in the comments below.