Five Chore Hacks: How to Get Things Done and Bond with Your Kids

At some point, I got it into my head that play time and chore time were separate. 

I told my kids we couldn’t play until the work was done, or I’d sit down to play and end the day surrounded by dirty dishes and mountains of laundry. I was guilty and restless both ways. 

Some days… or years… are like that. And that’s completely okay. But, my ideal is to have a semi-clean home AND feel connected with my kids.

I used to better at this, I realized. Better at the daily balance –  back when I had three at home, at my feet, all the time. Before homework and practice and three different schedules.

Back then, I tried to make the stuff I had to get done fun. Playtime and chore time combined. It’s time to go back to that integrated way of seeing the world.

Here are five ways that you can get your house in order and bond with your kids at the same time.

1. Hide your spare change in the laundry. The rule is the kids get to keep what they find, but the only way to look is to fold the laundry. Even kids who can’t fold can help by throwing items in the correct basket or handing them to you. It’s a weekly treasure hunt.
   
2. Play hide and seek. There are numerous ways to do this one. If your kids are little, have them hide while you pick up an area of the house. Find them when that section is clean. If they are older, assign them their own section to pick up. The first one done gets to hide while the second one done gets to seek.
   
3. Play pretend. I used to tell my kids that the disposal was a sea monster. They would sit on the counter and wait anxiously to hear him while I did the dishes. The vacuum was a land monster. They had to run away from it while it was eating all the bad guys on the floor–swoop in and try to get their toes as necessary to keep their attention.
   The tile/wood floor was hot lava. They had to get around the room without touching it while I mopped.
   
4. Tell stories. When I was teaching my kids how to clean the bathroom we had a deal. As long as they were working, I would tell stories about when I was little, embarrassing stories about when they were little, or we’d take turns saying sentences until a ridiculous story told itself between the two of us. If the child stopped working, the story stopped too.
   
5. Do a job and then play a game/dance for a song/whatever motivates them. Repeat until all jobs are done. Make a list of what needs to get done and then pick a shortish game, like Memory, Zombie Dice, or Mickey Yahtzee. The kids get to pick the job, help with it, pick the game, and then, the next job. If we have less time, we play freeze dance for a song in between tasks.

When you’re done lay on the floor with your eyes closed and tell your kids you’re the sleeping monster. Their job is to run around you (yes get all that energy out), while you half-heartedly try to grab their flailing feet and hands. 

Or…

Sit in a corner with a Nerf gun and have them run by at top speed while you try and shoot them.

You can always combine rest time and playtime too.

Nicole loves reading, writing, and traveling anywhere. She is happy going across the world or taking a ten minute walk if there is something new to explore. She has lived most of her life in warm sunny places: Saudi Arabia, Arizona, California, and now Southern Utah, and hopes that never changes. She lives with her business owner/surfer husband Justin, four kids, and no pets, hopefully ever… not even a fish. Nicole helps refugees tell their stories for Their Story is Our Story @tsosrefugees. You can also find her on instagram @nicolesuetaylor and on her sporadically updated blog realliferealjoy.com.