Home Decor - 29/32 - The Idea Room

Make a Shelf Out of a Door

**So excited for the Recessionista Party tonight! If you can’t come tonight, Recessionista now has some products available for purchase on their site. Just click the button on my sidebar to see what is available.

My hubby and I made this corner shelf out of an old bi-fold closet door we had laying around. I first got the idea here at Little Birdie Secrets and remembered the door we had in our storage room.

It was so easy and really did not involve a lot of work. It took us about 1.5 hours to make (not including the painting). Since the door was a bi-fold, we didn’t even have to cut the door in half. We used a packaged door frame molding for the molding around the shelf and added three shelves on the inside. Now I need to paint my topiary tree pot anitqued black. Stayed tuned for a tutorial so you can make your own shelf.

November 12, 2009 · Filed under: Home Decor, Re-Purposed Items Tagged with

Family Theme and Motto

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Several years ago I read a book, (Steven R. Covey; 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families) that was about families and how we could organize and run them more efficiently. It talked about looking at your family/home as a business (but of course with more personal relationships). He suggested you should gather your family together and come up with a family motto and/or theme. Something that represents what goals you have together and what you expect in your home. I loved the idea and we have since incorporated both a family motto and theme in our home.

Our family motto is “No Empty Chairs.” This is something very personal and specific for our family. It may not work for your family, but something will. The key is to find something that fits your family and your beliefs about who you are together and what your ultimate goal as a family is. A goal is never reached that is never reached for.

Ours means that we expect that all of the chairs in our home will be filled. Meaning no one will be gone or left out. This also has some deeper religious significance for us as we are striving to be a “Forever Family.”

This sign hangs in our Family Room. The room right next to the kitchen. The two rooms we spend the most time in together. This way we see it in our comings and goings.

We took our family theme from out of our scriptures (Doctrine and Covenants 88:119). It is a verse of scripture that represents what we expect within the walls of our home. Is our home always representative of these things? NO! But it is a reminder to us of the things we are working towards as a family. I had it made out of vinyl lettering and it is directly above our food pantry in the kitchen. A place where the kids are drawn multiple times a day.

I know many of you may not be familiar with that particular scripture or may not be religious. That’s okay! Everyone has some theme that will work best for their own family. I just share ours to give you an idea of what you could do for your own!

It has been interesting to listen to the kids describe these to visitors that come into our home and ask about their meaning! They really do listen when we are sure they are hearing nothing!

What do you think about having a family theme or motto in your home?

September 28, 2009 · Filed under: Home Decor, Parenting Help Tagged with

Chore Charts

34 Comments

I have had a few of you ask about how we manage chores here. I have made a chore chart for the kids using pictures I took from a Richard Scary book about Travel (can’t remember the title) that had already been ripped by one of my kids when they went through a book/magazine ripping phase. I cut the pictures out and scanned them into the computer and then made squares and included the chore name. I also used some stickers and clip-art pictures from the internet. After getting them all ready, I printed them out, laminated them and then put magnets on the back.

Then I made some more glass marble magnets with the initials of each child. Those are their chores for the week. Then on Sunday, my kids rotate their weekly chores. This is the part I have a hard time remembering, but the kids enjoying the chore of changing who does what, so they get to take turns with who gets to move the magnets. One less thing for me to worry about. We rotate by age. So one magnet is always replaced by the child who is immediately younger than the other. The chores on the top row are expected for each child.

I actually display these on our organizing bulletin board that is in our laundry room, but the light in that room is not great and when I took a picture with the flash, you could not see some of the detail. So these are just a few of chore cards we have to give you an idea of how we do it. I have tried charts and wheels, but this has seemed to work the best and is the most flexible. We have been using it for a few years now!

**And as a side note for those of you new to The Idea Room, I mentioned earlier that we don’t pay our kids for our regular chores or pay them an allowance. We have set up a Home Store and Reward System. I do pay the kids for doing extra chores so they can have a way to earn some money to be able to buy them a little something if they want to.