The Power Hour
One of the hardest parts of inviting people into your home is making your home presentable. I know, I know, what your home looks like doesn’t matter. We don’t need perfect homes to bring people in, blah, blah, blah.
Here’s the thing: I like to live in a clean house. And I prefer my house cleanish when people are in it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
The wild thing about that, though, is that what constitutes as a clean house is to me is going to be different than every single one of the book club girls that I had over last night. And there’s nothing wrong with that, either. We each get to choose.
Here’s how I’m choosing do it:
Behold, The Power Hour!
Here’s how it works:
When it is time to Power Hour ™ the Wetterstens assemble in the kitchen and receive their laminated task sheet. Nothing says, “I mean business” like a laminated checklist. The music selector selects the music, a 60 minute timer is set on the oven, and off we go, breaking into two teams to first tackle the common spaces.
We are a family of four – a husband, wife, and two kids. Our teams easily split into two: one kid and one adult per team. After two weeks, the kids will swap to work with a different adult. Does your family look different? No worries, stick with me, I’ll have some ideas for you in a minute.
Our Power Hour works on a 4 week rotation and a 2-page laminated sheet of tasks. Ok, that’s a lie. It’s actually 8 pages, but we only use 2 per person per week.
I’ve split the common areas of our home into about 6 zones: the living room, dining room, kitchen, entryway/powder room, upstairs bathrooms, and stairwell/upstairs hallway.
During week 1, one adult and one kid form a team and tackle zones 1-3. Each zone has kid-tasks, that tend to be more tidying tasks, like putting away shoes, toys, and other clutter, while the adult does more of the cleaning, like vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the toilets. A second team also consisting of an adult and kid are in charge of completing the tasks for zones 4-6.
After those boxes get checked, each person gets out a second list: their personal list of chores for tackling their own rooms, clean laundry, toyroom, etc. As you can see, my mammoth list that covers some more weekly chores, but again, more about that later.
Week 2, we switch tasks. The adults swap zones so that we’re cleaning different areas than last week. This is mainly because I am a snob and firmly believe that I clean better than poor Matt. However, I desire his help more than his perfection, so it’s essential that I shift my expectations and remember his best is good enough…and also remember that I gave it a good scrub last week and it’ll get my attention next week. We’ve all got our flaws. 😊
Week 3 sees the adults back to their week 1 zones but the kids are doing the same task as last week but working with a different adult. Since our family so easily splits in two, I like to avoid have a default combo. I never want our boys to feel like their brother is preferred by a specific parent. Switching it up frequently gives Matt and I time to work with each kid.
Week 4 keeps the teams the same, but everyone switches tasks one last time. Clear as mud?
I laminate these for durability and also so you can write on them with dry erase marker.
I tether the weekly rotations to the calendar so that I can always keep track of which week we’re on. We generally Power Hour on Sundays after church and before football, so the first Sunday of the month is week 1 and so on.
If there’s 5 Sundays in a month, I get out this special week 5 full of those tasks you only need to do every once in a while and an abbreviated cleaning checklist.
3 more reasons why I like to rotate tasks:
First, it’s important for me to teach my boys how to clean and how to share the household tasks. Rotating tasks and parents lets them learn how to tackle the majority of the household tasks from two different teachers.
I also want them to see that taking care of our home is not a task reserved for a specific gender. Cleaning toilets is not a job for women, vacuuming isn’t a job for men.
I also love them to see servant leadership. Their dad is a pretty important guy. And that pretty important leader takes a turn cleaning the bathroom. I like that they see humble leadership and equality as the norm in our home. I hope they’ll lead the same way.
I hope this could bring a little peace and order to your home, if you’re looking for that. You can have an editable copy of my Power Hour to make your own here. I’ll email it to you and you can do with it what you’d like to better fit your needs and family structure.
Speaking of family structures – what if your family looks different than mine? I told you I’d have some ideas for you!
My friend Leah has a family of 6 – two adults and four kids ages 12-6. She splits her family into 3 teams , 2 teams with 1 kid and 1 adult and a 3rd team of 2 kids. They also rotate through teams and tasks
If you have an odd number in your family, you could also split up your teams oddly, but then also weight your checklists to have tasks that need a larger team. Or you could still do even teams, but save your odd-man-out for a specific task, like doing all the vacuuming or being the window-washer.
Likewise, you could simply do away with teams, but rotate through a task sheets or zones. Word to the wise: think through your system so that not everyone is needing to use the same tools at the same time. I did buy Swiffer dusters for everyone to have their own, but made sure that one team is checking off vacuuming earlier in their hour and the other has that checkbox further down.
I fully believe that you will come up with your own brilliant method! Make sure you come tell me about it on this Instagram post and/or this Facebook post so others can benefit from your brilliance.
