Ideas for organizing kids to help clean

So I am feeling much better, with energy though I still cough a bit but I am dressed and being productive :) Here is something that I had said I would do quite some time ago, but never got around to it. Sorry, but better late than never, I hope. *** An important part of working with children (or anyone) is helping them feel able to do the work, training them, so they can be successful. You start small/easy and build up to more and harder jobs, as it is the pits to not understand and then have your efforts disparaged! (never do that as you want to keep positive energy for cleaning) I think I will just start listing some things we did, (that worked for at least an acceptable period of time-- as it really helps to change things around and make it feel new besides kids age etc). One of my favorite was, what I actually felt inspired to do to modify from the "Side Tracked Home Executives" card file system idea. I also set this up for our Ward Member cleaning, as I was called to be head of that some time ago. When years later we were called as team members to help clean the temple it was cool to see they used a form of the same thing! I organized on a piece of paper first, all the various jobs with exactly what each job entailed, along with any cleaning tools necessary to do the job, and where they were found. (this took the most time, but it was worth it!) I tried to divide the jobs so that no job took more than 1/2 an hour to do. For instance, I didn't have one person vacuuming the WHOLE house, I divided it into separate areas-- like one card for vacuuming the stairs & halls, one for vac the family room, one vac for the living room. (the kids were all required to clean their own bedrooms on their own time) I also organized the jobs as to what was ESSENTIAL to do, (bathrooms! laundry! etc) down to what would be nice if we had excess people (sweep the sidewalk in front of the house?) . I put the ESSENTIAL work at the top and I numbered each job. It could also be adjusted to difficulty to do-- like age appropriate jobs- which then could be color coded, and for the little ones, draw little pictures of a duster and different places to dust? Then I typed up the job descriptions and printed them sized so they would fit on a 3/5 card, so I could cut them apart and laminate them with clear contact paper to the cards. On each job card I had duplicates made, so one went with the worker and one stayed on the chart board. -- I typed in Bold-- "work in progress" and "work finished" strips that were laminated on opposite ends of the cards, so when a person was working on a job, they turned the card on its end, so the appropriate sign showed. another improvement, would to make several for each worker, little kind of like award ribbons (circle rosette with bit of ribbon trailing) with each childs name on them, so you would know who had done which job already or who was working on what. These could be attached to paperclips so they could be attached to the workcards each time. Some work also did best with two people, and that would be indicated on the cards too. To make the work chart, I used a stiff poster board, and taped strips of more of the board across it, to make long pockets, in rows, enough for all the work to be included. I marked off enough room for the cards to sit side by side in the slots, and I numbered and labled the areas so that it was easy to see where the cards went. One could make this quite artistic and fun using stickers and colors too. Oh, I almost forgot, either a parent or a responsible older child who has been trained needs to be the "inspector" and be sure the work is done adequately. Also letting the children have choices of what to do (as long as the essential things are getting done!) is a help too. One thing I learned (the hard way) is to have a time or a basic amount done- so the kids didn't feel like the working time would never end. They needed to know that when enough was done they could go-- BUT have appropriate rewards for those who work the most, and for the whole group if MUCH is accomplished in a short time! If this reward (maybe a family outing to a park or beach or movie or $ ? -- try not to use food :( as it can backfire into obesity! is given as soon as the work is declared acceptable and enough done, it REALLY energizes! They work faster when they know the prize will come faster. You might also want to have some negative consequence for any who want to try out the "slacker" position. You can talk to the family about these things ahead of time- when you are wanting to get them jazzed about the clean home and rewards.