Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning.  I love it.  Even though the groundhog saw that shadow and predicted more bad weather, I've gotten into the Spring Cleaning mood!  I think it's the fact that we had 78 degree weather most of this week so I feel like winter is over!  Or maybe, I just got tired of my unorganized front closet that I couldn't really get into without something falling on me.  So, I've been meaning to make a chore chart to keep myself and my family organized when it comes to getting things done around the house.  After looking at some ideas and tweaking things here's what I came up with:

Okay, so that picture doesn't do it justice.  I really need a better camera...

I love the idea of the magnetic chore charts because they're easy to move around and can be stored on the side of the fridge, which is great for us because we don't have a lot of extra space around our mini house.  I just used colored electrical tape (I got mine at Home Depot) and a Sharpie to create the grid for each of us.  They love having their own colors and their initial right about their row.  It makes it more like a game than chores! This was so easy to make, and pretty cheap too.  I've noticed a HUGE difference in the help I get around the house now that it's fun to move your magnet over to the "Done" category.  Why didn't I think of this before?

We also created a reward system that I'll post more about later. 

Here's how I made my magnets.

Like most good projects, I started with a PowerPoint slide to get my thoughts together.  I LOVE PowerPoint.  I was able to insert a circle the size of my circle punch from Michaels (mine is 1" round) so I could make sure the text would fit on my circle before printing it out.  Since I wanted three different colors too, I was able to just make three separate slides so it would print out on the color it was supposed to be.  Fantastic!

Then you print that baby out and punch out the circles.  You could also cut them out with scissors, but you'll love this a lot more if you have a punch!  It's totally worth it!  I color coded mine with green being the quick, easy chores; yellow the in-between, more effort chores; & red being the time consuming/ones people hate to do chores (i.e. cleaning the toilets).

Next, I went in search of wooden circles.  They did have some at Michael's but they weren't exactly what I was looking for, so I opted for a wooden dowl a bit bigger than an inch so my punched out circles wouldn't go quite to the edge.  Luckily I have a handyman living in my house who happens to love me a lot and will do almost anything for me...so a few minutes with the chop saw and I had this:

Yep.  I tupperware full of ready to be chore magnet circles!

Then we sanded the rough edges off with the Dremel, but you could easily do it with regular sandpaper, just enough that it wouldn't cause any slivers in little hands.  Then I spray painted mine with some leftover gray paint we had in the shed:

It was a nice day, so they dried super fast and we glued the chore circles onto those circles.  You don't have to worry to much about making sure the edges are down well because we Modge Podge over the whole thing.

After that's all dry, you flip them over and glue a magnet to the back.  I like the little circle magnets because they're strong and the perfect size for these little circles.

Let that glue dry and there you have it!  Organization for chore time!