Free Digital Download – Chore Charts

Updated August 15, 2012:
Please support me! New and improved versions of my chore charts (11 colors total in 3 designs, plus an editable pdf!) are now available in my shop for $3: The Everything Planner : Chore Chart Printables.

You might also be interested in The Everything Planner : Organize Me Printables for $4:

Or, you can save yourself some time, money, and regret by grabbing the whole kit and caboodle: those plus everything else a busy mom needs for $13, by clicking here: The Everything Planner : 2012 – 2013.

Am I the only person who gets her butt kicked during summer vacation? (That’s a lie… I get it kicked pretty much year round, but I especially notice it during the summer.)

This summer hit me harder than usual, though, since Steve was home for the first month and a half of summer vacation. You remember that surgery he had a few months ago? Well, after a complication or two, and another surgery (or TWO!), he ended up with a bit of an extended vacation. Only it wasn’t spent cruising around the world. Or lazing on a beach. It was spent corralling kids.

You know how the first week or so after school gets out is hard, as you adjust your schedules, and the kids get used to later hours, no homework, etc? Yeah, not so tough when you have a co-parent at home, but brutal when he heads back to work. BRUTAL.

I’m still trying to recover.

Since I’m about the most disorganized person on the planet, the only way I’ve found to reasonably fake competence as a busy mother-of-four-with-an-Etsy-shop-and-two-other-jobs-besides is to get organized. Yes, I have officially become my mother, and I follow a list. If it’s not written down, it ain’t happening. Seriously.

Along with my own super cool chore chart (which I use for menu planning and grocery shopping as well), I really wanted the kids to do some of my work learn some responsibility, but, being me, it has to look good. Function without form sucks, right? Right.

I stumbled across these chore chart notepads by Knock Knock, and loved the clean, graphic style:
Super cool, yeah? I, however, wanted it to be a bit more personalized, and I wanted a different one for each of my kids, since there’s a pretty big gap between how much work I can get out of responsibility I can teach a nine-year-old, and what a two-year-old is capable of doing.

I created some in Illustrator, mostly because I want to become more comfortable with it. I did the same basic design in four different colors, but personalized the chores for each one. I’m still toying with the idea of having it printed as a notepad, because I think that’s pretty darn cool. But, the cheap green Gen says that it’s much better to just print it once, have it laminated, and then let them use dry erase markers. The next morning, we’ll wipe them all off, and start again. (It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it?)

After I got mine all printed, I took it back to basic for you. They’re blank, and in .pdf form, so you can either print them as-is, or fancy them up in Photoshop. There’s two per page, in four different colors; and I hope that they come in handy, however you use them!

Click here to download my handy-dandy chore charts.