Our family owned the same house for more than thirty years. We used the vertical part of closet doors, the door jambs, for charting how tall we all were getting. Probably twice a year, using a book and a pencil, our Dad would officiate the measurement using a dash mark, our name, and the date.
Nowadays, the population in the States is more likely to grow up in a few different homes. Here’re a couple of options that work as portable door jambs.
One is a tape measure that’s blank, without anything written on the tape part. So periodically put the blank tape against a permanent door jamb and put a dash, the kid’s name, and the date straight onto the tape with a sharpie. When you move you have a memory device that can easily move with you. It’s called a story tape and costs about six bucks. The outside of the case is blank too so you can label it.
Another option is a six-foot wooden measuring stick that’s made for recording kids’ growth. It’s a low tech version of the blank tape measure but a little harder to move to a new house because it’s basically a six-foot long ruler. And it seems expensive at $78. It’s called a growth chart ruler.
Whether you use the old-fashioned door jamb, a story tape, or a growth chart ruler kids and parents can still marvel at kids growing when it’s often hard to tell day-to-day.