Super Fabulous Chore Chart!

So my children aren't bad about doing chores around the house.  In fact my girls are at the stage where they love to help.  They will sweep, mop, do dishes and many other chores but there is one thing I can't seem to get my kids to do at all....pick up their toys.  They leave stuff all over the house and they seem to think the floors in their rooms are their toy boxes.

Old Plan:

So awhile back, I came up with a genius (or so I thought at the time) plan.  I told my kids that any toys they left on the floor in the common rooms when they went to bed would be picked up by Stuffy the Stuff Monster and put in a box. He would not take them home if they did a chore to get them back.  But if they haven't done the chore within a few days, Stuffy would get to take them home as his treasure. (You may have seen something similar on Pinterest but w/out the Stuffy character.) It actually worked really well at first.  They got most of their stuff put in their rooms and I got extra chores done when they didn't. The girls were fascinated with Stuffy and would ask "Is Stuffy coming tonight?" almost every day. But this plan had one major problem.  Can you guess what it was? The major problem was there was no Stuffy.  Stuffy was just me who had to add the chore of picking up their stuff to the end of my day.  Some nights I forgot and other nights I was just so tired and then I would have to make an excuse for why Stuffy didn't come.  So this leads to the...

New Plan:

I've seen chore charts everywhere lately and I even thought about buying one.  But I wasn't sure how it would motivate my kids to pick up their toys and I also just couldn't see spending a bunch of money on one. I had also seen awhile back, someone mention that they had a chore chart when their kids were littler and if they had done their chores for the day they got a sticker and if they got so many stickers they got a date with someone. (Not exactly sure what they meant by date, probably an outing with a friend or mom/dad and I don't remember where I read this.  I had no idea I would be blogging about this then so I can't give credit where credit is due.)  This didn't really spur an idea until my oldest son, DP bought "principal for the day" with his accelerated reading points.  He had worked so hard and was so excited about being able to purchase that fun day. (It's the top prize you can purchase! Proud mom here!)  Long story, short long, I thought we could do the same sort of thing at home. We would give stickers for chores and let them buy activities with these stickers.  This new plan also solves the problem of getting them to pick up their rooms daily.

The Chore Chart:

I created the chore chart out of stuff we had on hand. I wanted it to be bright and fun looking to get my kids excited. Cardboard, contact paper, and scrapbook paper.  I wanted to be able just to add a new paper when they had theirs filled up or be able to change the chores or rewards by just adding a new paper. Also in the pictures the chores and rewards aren't all filled in because the whole family is deciding this together and we weren't done.  I just taped the paper on and taped the string onto the back to hang it. I hot glued the clothespin on to hold the stickers.  

The reward prices seemed high to my husband but there are 3 daily chores that earn stickers and the weekly ones will be worth 2.  I'm not giving stickers for everything though, some stuff they do just because they are a member of the family.  I guess we'll see as we go. So far it's working well.
How do you get your kids to pick up their stuff?


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