Our Card System

An article originally created in 2001.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not a naturally neat or organized person. My sister is organized and has been since birth, as far as I can tell. She gets up in the morning, remembers everything she needs to do, and does each task without getting sidetracked. She’s an amazing person, but I’m not her. I’ve given up on trying to force myself to become her, but some important things won’t get done without being neat and organized.

First, I tried lists. I can do lists. I can, in fact, make absolutely amazing lists. Unfortunately, after I write them, I forget to look at them. Another problem was that they were my lists, and they didn’t remind the other family members of what they needed to do.

What worked for our family was a modified version of the card file system introduced in the Sidetracked Home Executive books by sisters Pam Young and Peggy Jones. I understand Pam and Peggy moved on to some new version of the system, but the old one worked best for me, so I stuck with it.

The basics of their system: go through your house and list everything that needs to be done to keep the home as clean, neat, and organized as you like. Figure out how often those tasks need to be done, too. Some people choose to make cards for other repeating events, like trips to the grocery store. I added a note about which family members can do various tasks, as some could only be done by an adult, some by any of the kids, and some only by children of a certain age. An estimate of the time needed is helpful for some people, and some folks like to have a list of any equipment required for a specific task. Everything goes on an index card. The cards are filed in a box with dividers for days of the week, month, etc. Each morning, you take out the cards for the day, do what’s on them, and re-file them whenever they should be done again (tomorrow, next week, in 6 months, etc.)

I had index cards back in the mid-80s or so when I first used the system. In the late ’90s, I entered recurring appointments in a special calendar file in Outlook to remind me that it was time to water the plants, change the air filter, or vacuum the carpets. That kept me on task, but we also had our kids participate in household tasks on a rotating basis, and the kids didn’t like lists, whether printed from Outlook or handwritten. So we went back to actual index cards, as suggested in the original S.H.E. books. Today, I would probably use a shared family calendar in Google, Proton, or iCloud.

We used color-coded cards to denote how often a task needed to be done (white for daily, yellow for 2 or 3 times a week, blue for weekly, etc.). At first, I wrote out the cards by hand, but later I had a document with all the cards in a label template (Avery 2″ x 4″ shipping labels fit 3″ x 5″ index cards very nicely).

Simply saying "clean the kitchen" didn’t work with our family members. We all took turns doing that task, so I added the details to help everybody remember all the individual items that went into making the kitchen acceptably clean.

We used a token system of awards for tasks done by the kids, so the token value for each task was also on the card. Here’s a typical card:

I took care of most of the heavy chores during the week (dusting, vacuuming, etc.) while the kids took care of the pets, emptied the trash, and helped in the kitchen. We cleaned the house completely each Saturday morning when everyone was home to help.

If a child completed a task, they turned the card in to me or my partner and collected their tokens. The adult re-filed the cards in the box. Each day I printed out a daily details list from the family calendar and sorted the next day’s cards. The kids each had a special place for their cards and I had a place for mine. There was another place for things I would like to have done but that weren’t necessarily assigned to anyone. The kids looked there if they wanted to earn extra tokens.

There were other things that we wanted the kids to remember. I hated nagging, so the kids each had daily routine cards. For instance, when Genevieve was nine years old, her morning card reminded her to use her deodorant, get dressed, brush her hair, eat breakfast, take her vitamins, brush her teeth, and check the family calendar and her chore cards for the day. Her evening card reminded her to shower, comb her hair, brush her teeth, and lay out her clothes for the next day. When she had the card, it was easy for her to remember to do all those things. Without the card, she almost always forgot at least two of them.

The longer we used the system, the more cards we made up. I noticed one day that the baseboards were dirty in the kitchen, so I created a card to remind me to scrub them monthly. It wasn’t easy to remember to clean all the ceiling fan blades, but I made a weekly card for it. There was a daily card to remind us to wash out and refill the birdbath and one for refilling the bird feeders. We didn’t remember to do those things otherwise. After we established the reminders we got lots more wildlife around the house and it was a joy to watch all the birds and animals. We even had a card to remind us to have our weekly family meetings, because otherwise, we forgot to have them.

You can see one iteration¹The cards changed over time. They had to, as our family and home changed. of our cards if you’re interested. There are several other sites that publish lists of tasks on their cards, but I haven’t found any others that go into detail as to exactly what each task entails. Anyone is more than welcome to use that document for card ideas. It and its contents may not be redistributed or republished. I’ve also provided a blank Word document as a template to help you make up your own cards.

At least one of the cards instructs the reader to reference “the big notebook.” That’s where we kept our detailed definitions of what was entailed in cleaning each room. That notebook and its contents are long gone, so that information isn’t present here.