Chore Chat
If your family has been accustomed to weekly maid service or regular lawn care maintenance, you may also be looking at easy places to cut down on household expenses. These two services in particular can often cost a household several hundred dollars over the course of a year's time. It will require some extra work on the part of family members, but with specific planning and creative goal setting, you can wind up with results that benefit more than just your wallet.
There’s a reason it’s called house work. Enlist adults and teens to be a part of the work of keeping a home clean and picked up and they may even get some residual health benefits, in physical activities such as vacuuming and mowing grass. Include younger families members in household chores as a great way to teach lessons in responsibility, teamwork and accountability. Incorporate goal-setting and allowances into the process and you have the opportunity to introduce the value of work into the process as well. If you’re looking for more specific guidelines on how to organize household assignments for the family, about.com has plenty of valuable pointers here.