Chores

I must admit - I've always had a thing for chore charts!  Even while growing up in a small family with just one younger brother, I took on the task of creating and managing  (okay, controlling) the chore charts.

With a large family of my own, chore charts became a necessity rather than a novelty.

After many years of different kinds of chore charts, the one that has lasted the longest and proven to be the most efficient is to assign each child one basic chore to do every day for the WEEK (Monday – Saturday). If the child is assigned  to “wash dishes” then they wash the dishes every day for one entire week. If they don’t like to wash dishes, then it will be a just a few weeks before they have to handle another dirty dish. The beauty of this is that they really cannot “slack-off” in their “department” because if the floor is crumbly by mid-week, you will know who is not doing their job 100%.

We have chore assignments for each week of the month (5 charts in all), and the laminated chore charts just rotate each week and are posted on the refrigerator. With each week comes a “Saturday clean-up” responsibility that coordinates with their weekly chore: Laundry assistant mops the floor and tidy’s the laundry room on Saturday.

It also helps to post step-by-step “job descriptions” for each chore near the work area. It is amazing how a young person can stand in a bathroom all morning wondering how to clean the toilet! Posting the laminated process of cleaning the toilet allows the child to know what your expectations are and helps them through a task that could be rather difficult for them.

 Below are the chore assignments for our family:

1. Kitchen: Wash dishes / unload dishwasher
2. Kitchen: Set table / dry dishes / wipe counters
3. Kitchen: Meal assistant
4. Vacuum and Sweep
5. Laundry Assistant – helps to sort clothes into washer and fold clean clothes and put them in the “cubbies”. Each child has a “cubbie” by the dryer so they can put their OWN clean clothes away.  (No more laundry on the bed!)
6. Bathroom
7. Trash
8. Car patrol - clean out trash and vacuum on Saturdays

The chore chart shown is a sample chart.  It would be easy for you to create your own basic chart and just rotate the names over the specific jobs.  If you have a smaller family, you can use this idea to customize your own family's weekly chart.