Trigger Memory Systems: Clean 'N' Flip

Trigger Memory Systems wants to help you help your kids learn how to help clean house! They have put together three Clean 'N' Flip charts:

1. Zone Cleaning For Kids: Concentrates on the common areas: living room, kitchen, and bathroom. A nicely laminated, easy-to-use system that allows the parent to assign zones (rooms) and tasks. It even allows for specifying different times during a day that the tasks should be completed.

2. Bedroom Cleaning For Kids: Teaches kids how to tackle messes in their own rooms. The kids will begin at the door and work their way around the room sorting, organizing, and putting away items in a highly systematic fashion that is easy to follow...voila, clean bedroom!

3. Laundry For Kids: This is the newest Clean 'N' Flip chart. It takes kids through a parent-customized checklist of simple steps to learn the basics of handling dirty laundry all by themselves.

My final verdict: I really like Zone Cleaning and Bedroom Cleaning. Zone Cleaning is simple and well thought out. I like the lamination which allows for quick assignment and reassignment of rooms and tasks to different members of the family. Bedroom Cleaning is not laminated but does not need to be as the chart is intended to be used by a single person in one room. It could be easily modified if necessary (for example one child does the first three steps and another child can take care of the remaining five). I like both because they, again, have simple steps with simple illustrations and follow an effective, well planned system.

I am not a big fan of the Laundry For Kids chart. It is written with the same easy-to-follow steps and illustrations, but the steps are so general that I don't find it particularly useful. It's almost not the fault of the product though. Every household is going to have a different kind of washer and dryer. A lot of them function radically different. It would be impossible to write a simple chart to correctly use them all. In these days of top load or side load, high efficiency machines, special detergents, liquid fabric softeners, fashion fabrics, etc. each home has to have its own formula for properly sorting, washing, and drying the laundry.

Each Clean 'N' Flip cart is available separately or can be purchased in money-saving sets. Check out Trigger Memory Systems to see page samples and prices.