8 Ways to Make Chores More Fun

Here are 8 surefire ways to change up the boring cleaning routine. It helps to vary the motivation to learn and do your chores well. (This sometimes applies to mom as well as to the children.)

* Make a sticker chart. Have the children pick out their favorite stickers and only use them for the chart.

* Use a rewards system, each chore= X amount of points and XY amount of points = getting to do Z. Come up with different rewards with varying amount of points. You can make the rules more complicated and allow points to banked from week to week. Or, you can keep it simpler and use the points at the end of each week.

* 15 minute dash, set the timer and see who gets the most done in 15 minutes

* Make it a challenge “I bet I can get this done before you. If you beat me I’ll make spaghetti for dinner (or other favorite dinner).

* Offer up a small allowance, money is a motivator even for kids

* Trade chore time for computer/video game/whatever time in equal amounts - 1 hour of completing chores = 1 hour of video games this week  (This can work for mom's computer time as well.)

* Make a duel scavenger hunt / cleaning chore list ~ clean this and find this, clean here and find that, clean over here and find this. 

* Do the fling.  Put a basket in the middle of the room and fling all the toys into it, or use the trash bin and fling all the trash into it, depending on what your clean goal is.

Learning to do your chores well and cheerfully is an important part of growing up. The chores one must do never go away and in fact continue to increase with age, but that doesn't mean it has to be a negative thing.

What do you do in your home to make chores more fun?