Getting kids to help around the house can be easy or it can be a battle. Just as we have chores we enjoy and the ones we do not children are the same. Here we give you ideas that you may find useful to offer your children new tasks they may not have tried before. Break the monotony of your child’s chores today!

Many adults HATE washing windows, my children love it. If you fill a spray bottle with white vinegar, they can safely clean windows with out you worrying about them handling harsh chemicals. I have nine children often I assign each of them a window and we have a contest to see who is the best window washer. I give the winner a small treat. They love this little game as they are all competitive and I get awesomely clean windows!

With many little ones in our home the living room rug is in constant need of vacuuming. My solution was to make it a family chore, as we all know if you have an upright vacuum or a vacuum with a beater bar it is never safe for a child to run that. We purchased a nine-teen dollar stick vac from Wal-Mart.I told the children they were more then welcome to use it, that it would be a huge help to their father and I. Now we can not get them to stop using the stick vac. Even my four year old loves it! I do not have to use the big vacuum hardly at all!

I keep a basket on my dryer; in it I place all my used dryer sheets. My younger son likes to dust with them .Granted he does not do the job I would do but they pick dust up well and has cut my dusting time down. He loves to dust the TV.I also keep a big fluffy duster that the older kids don’t mind using.

If you have kids then you like me have a tub that needs constant cleaning. My kids love to sit in the tub that has been sprinkled with lots of backing soda, a spray bottle of white vinegar and a cloth. They don’t even see it as work! Of course they do get backing soda on them but that’s ok we just rinse the now cleaner tub and give them a bath! My older son came up with the idea of a couple drops of food coloring to make the backing soda almost like paint. They sit there and make designs in the colored baking soda while at the same time it is getting cleaned (how ever this may not be safe for all surfaces!)

Kids get sick of hearing clean your room. I know I did growing up. So once in a while I make a trade with my children. I tell them if you clean the living room I will clean your room. Many times they are happy to accept the offer. Mind you this works best with children that are a little older and have fairly good cleaning skills.

My boys are all into sports. We bought them a small hamper for their room and painted it to look like a basket ball hoop. Often times when I ask them to pick up their dirty clothing you will find them slam dunking them in .It gets a little noisy but they have fun and the chore gets done with out it feeling so much like work for them.

Older children can be taught to load the washer and run it properly, Younger children can be taught to short wash with some adult help. We as a family fold and put the wash away together. They enjoy it most days. I enjoy the time with them as well as the help. The days they don’t enjoy it (meaning they don’t just offer to help) I do not ask. I have not made it a chore for them. So perhaps that is why they enjoy it? It is so nice when one of my older children throw in a load just because they felt like it. Makes me really feel they will be very self sufficient as adults.

Almost any chore can be modified for a small child to do or help with. All of the above are simply chores I have discovered my own children enjoy. There are so many little things that we as adults see as monotonous that children enjoy and learn from. Many chores I do along side my children. It is quality time together.