Do this! {A family CHORE STORE}

Today I had the ABSOLUTE PLEASURE of going over to my gal-pal Heather's house, where we set up her very own family 'Chore Store'. Oh.... don't know what a chore store is, you say? Keep reading!

We started our own family chore store about 2 years ago. Whilst complaining about what dreadful beasts my children were whenever I asked them to do ANYTHING around the house, my friend, Sharyn mentioned that one of her mom-friends had tried this with her pack of 6 - and I was immediately smitten with the idea! I had seen the power of a ticket counter in action at both Chuckie Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza, so I pretty much KNEW this concept would work for my family. And it DID! So, here's how it works.

Make chore lists for each of your kids with daily and weekly jobs. Associate payment amounts in ticket form for each chore. We did daily and weekly chores on one list. Because these are framed behind glass, the kids can easily use dry erase markers each day to help them remember what chores they've done and haven't. It helps if you keep a separate accounting of jobs completion if you don't plan on doling out tickets daily. {But its really kind of fun to hand out 'paychecks' every day at the beginning :)

{We worked REALLY, REALLY hard to make sure the frames were spaced just right and total level..... OMG I AM TOTALLY LYING! Heather is my kind of hammer-er! She eyeballs it, hammers impetuously and occasionally taps the tops of nails to keep things on the level. She is balls-to-the-wall in the hardware department and I LOVE IT! Level? We don't need no stinkin' level!}

Now, go buy stuff you know your kids want. Stuff that speaks to them. Cheap stuff from the dollar section TOTALLY WORKS! Well, maybe not for teenagers, but definitely for the younger crowd. Now, decide what each item is worth.

For Heather's store, we figured out that each ticket should roughly be worth about 25 cents. But some of the really cool stuff she knew her kids would LOVE? Bumped up those prices. More bang for your buck, totally. See that red bucket? It's full of coupons for 15 minutes {each} of computer/video time. Genius!

Doesn't this make YOU want to come over to Heather's house and get your chore on?

There is also room for extra chore OPPORTUNITIES! For real? My kids were BEGGING BEGGING BEGGING to get to do extra chores. {ahh, the power of cheap, plastic toys.....}
It is a beautiful thing...

A few last pieces of advice:
*Make sure your kiddos initial their tickets when you give dole them out. Totally prevents the "HE/SHE TOOK MY TICKET" issue. *Also, you will probably want to establish a safe place to keep tickets for each child. Nothing more heartbreaking than to lose saved up tickets... *Also, I encouraged my kids to talk about pooling their tickets to buy bigger ticket items that benefit the lot of them {like a coupon for a night at the movies or a new game} It is a great lesson in learning to work together :)

Heather has this great basket to keep everything together, up and out of the way until Saturday mornings when her little chore store will be open for business. I imagine she'll get her receipt book and bags out, set stuff up so it's ready to go at 9 am {because don't we all hate when our favorite store doesn't open on time}greet each little hard working customer with a smile and thank them each for a job well done! {Oh, and we rotated who got to shop first}

And by the way, isn't Heather's house delightful?

Every room.

Every nook and cranny. ... Maybe I just WILL move in. Heather, any chance there will be FABRIC stocked in that chore store????? :)