Balancing work and family life is difficult enough, so adding more stresses and responsibilities on top of them can really take a toll. If you're working 50 hours a week chances are you want to spend your home time with the kids and your spouse, right? Yet there are certain things that every family needs to take care of. The most important: our homes. 

It is important to not only take pride in the appearance of our homes, but also to instill that value in our children. Hiring people to take care of home improvement projects takes care of the former, but doesn't quite fulfill the latter. Thankfully, there are many home improvement projects that you can not only perform easily, but also involve your kids at the same time.

Of the dozens of projects, these have been my five favorite to do with my kids.

1. Rearrange a room

This is one of those projects where you entice the kids by saying one thing, while intending a different result. Yes, you can involve the kids in rearranging a room. But what you want to accomplish is cleaning a room top-to-bottom. As you might imagine, having three or four people helping with this makes the work go much faster than doing it solo or just with your spouse.

Tell the kids that you want to see how a room would look if you moved around some things. Chances are they'll want to help out with this. "Wouldn't it be neat if," is a good way to start that conversation. Before you can start, though, you'll have to pick up things off the floor. Then you'll have to start moving things so you can vaccum everywhere, and maybe clean the walls and windows. Before you know it, the room is clean. 

The key here is to not be attached to the way the room is currently arranted. You can't tell the kids you want to rearrange a room and then renege. They might not be so eager to help next time. 

2. Replacing and cleaning filters

If you want your heating and cooling systems to run efficiently and not cost you needless money, you need to clean and replace the air fitlers regularly. This can be a tedious task, and chances are you can't convince your kids that vacuuming out a filter is any fun. In any case, that's probably not a good idea in the first place. You need the kind of elbow grease only an adult body can provide.

Yet kids do love taking things apart and putting them back together. When you're cleaning air filters you can have the kids remove them and then put them back. It might not be much help to you, but it lets you involve the kids in something that you have to do anyway.

3. Priming cabinet doors

If it's time to remodel the kitchen, chances are you're going to replace the kitchen cabinets. It's a fairly easy project, and it might involve only removing the old doors, sanding them down, and then repainting them. Of course, you wouldn't trust your child to sand down or even paint the doors. Those are aspects they can screw up. What they can do is lay down the coat of primer. That's easy enough, with little chance of a huge error.

Of all the projects we've done together, this was my favorite. I got to research kitchen cabinet ideas to come up with something that worked for our kitchen. Being a DIYer, I fused those ideas into something my own, building the doors with my husband. We then let the kids apply the primer, and they were just so happy. They felt like they were painting, and we got to relax and enjoy watching them have a ball. 

4. Wash the car

This one parents have been doing since time immemorial -- or, at least, since people started owning cars. The formula is as simple as you might imagine. Hook up the hose and let the kids go hog wild with it. Just lay down the ground rule that they can't spray it while you're soaping up the car. So they get to hose it down, and then hose it down again after you're done cleaning a section. There is no way they won't have fun doing this.

Just be prepared to get sprayed yourself. And if your kids are anything like my kids, they'll laugh and run as you take the house and turn the tables on them. This makes for some simple fun on a summer afternoon, and you can take advantage every time the car needs a wash. 

5. Replacing windows and screens

This one I got from author Stephen King. In his memoir On Writing he tells the story of how his uncle, a carpenter, took him along for the quick task of replacing a screen window. It taught King a lesson that he applied to his writing, but for me it had a more practical and direct application. At our house we change the screens twice a year, first when it starts to get warm and then we change back to glass when the weather cools in October. 

Bring the kids along for this, if only to hold the screws. It will teach them a little bit about responsibility. They're in charge of those screws. Don't put them down, or you might lose them. If they can reach, and operate a screwdriver, you can even let them work on a lower part of the window. Trust me, even though they might not look like they're having fun they definitely are. Our kids beg to be helpers when we're changing the screens.