chore chart

You don’t need a housekeeper. You’ve got kids.

Yes, I realize that to some, this idea might seem foolish. After all, entropy exists in all spaces that kids inhabit. Messes and children are practically synonymous.

However, it IS possible to keep a clean house that houses children without hiring a housekeeper (or doing it all yourself). I promise. I have five little (and not so little) munchkins. I gave up dreams of a perfect house long ago – but I can also assure you that my house ranks reasonably high in the “tidy” factor.

How do I do it? Why slave labor, of course. (At least that’s what my kids might call it). I refer to it as “earning your keep”. Nothing comes for free in this house.

Sure, I’m obligated to feed, clothe, love and teach you, and part of that teaching demands that you learn to clean up after yourselves. I’ve blogged about it before. As a review, the basic rundown is this:

  1. Self-maintenance chores: These include tidying your own spaces (bedroom, primarily), picking up after yourself in common areas, and other such things that are age-appropriate such as packing your own lunch for school, brushing your teeth, doing laundry, etc. As a child gets older, self-maintenance chores increase in number, as do his/her privileges. My kids are not paid for these chores – they are regarded as an opportunity to learn independence.
  2. Family chores: These are responsibilities outlined on a chore chart. They benefit the entire family and apply to spaces occupied/used by everyone in the family. They include things like cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting, etc. I break them down into smaller tasks to trick their minds into thinking they’re doing less work. And it works! Though the kids don’t earn money for each specific chore, their “allowance” is contingent upon satisfactory completion of them on a weekly basis.
  3. Paid chores: I assign these on an as-needed basis. I pretty much always have extra work available, if the kids want to earn a little cash on the side. My personal favorites (in other words, the chores I tend to neglect): sorting socks, shredding paper bills and statements, cleaning windows, and dusting blinds.

Since we added an extra 700 square feet onto our house in 2018, Tim and I determined that we needed to reconfigure our chore chart a bit to accommodate the extra space. (And to keep me from having to do the legwork). Because, hello, I am a homemaker, not everyone’s personal maid.

Here’s the new chore chart.

It looks about the same as the old chore chart (to trick the kiddos into thinking nothing has changed, of course) but it accounts for the new bathroom, the extra living space downstairs, and the bonus room.

We do all these chores on a Friday afternoon, and, I kid you not, each of my daughters only has to do about 30-45 minutes of work (in addition to cleaning their rooms) and the house is immaculate. Almost.

Seriously, don’t hire a housekeeper. Put those kids to work. It’s their house, too. They need to feel some ownership and responsibility. That is best accomplished with good old-fashioned elbow grease.

Our family chore system defined.

A family chore system that has worked for seven years running.

I was just talking to a friend tonight who just had just gotten back from a visit with extended family.   Someone in that family had made mention of the cleaning service they employ on a regular basis, a subject with which my friend’s daughter was unacquainted so she asked her cousin, “Cleaning service, what’s that?”

To which her cousin replied, “Wait.  You mean you guys don’t have someone come clean your house?”

“Um, no we clean it,” was her response.  Later that day she thanked her mom for teaching them to work around the house.

Now, I realize that very few people who hire outside help to maintain a household fail to teach their kids to participate in chores.  Still, the important thing to remember is that our kids are best served when they feel a sense of ownership and responsibility.  Which is most easily acquired as they care for their living environment.  Here’s where the family chore chart comes in.

(Disclaimer: results may vary and there should be no, I repeat, NO expectation that your offspring will thank you for your efforts to shape and mold them into contributing human beings).

Chore charts come in all shapes and sizes.  I’m sure we tried every single one of them before finally settling on what worked for our family.  It looks a bit like this:

The first part are self-maintenance chores – things like brushing your teeth, making your lunch, cleaning your room, etc.  These are daily responsibilities which must happen BEFORE any playtime can happen or special requests made.  At the end of the day, if each of the children completed all their tasks without a bajillion reminders, they get a big magnet.  If they completed them with a bit of arm-twisting, they get a medium magnet.  A small magnet if they didn’t care enough to try.

At the end of the week we tally up their score and award one token per point they earn – big magnets are worth +1, medium = 0 and a small magnet gets you -1.  Sunday is our day of rest so they can earn up to 6 tokens per week.  Which pretty much never happens, but we don’t demand perfection around here.

Tokens can be traded in for rewards including screen time (because yeah, there’s no such thing as free screen time on weekdays around here), extra dates with mom or dad, and other fancy stuff like yarn or coloring books or candy.  The beautiful part is it actually works – we’re going on seven years of rockin’ this system so I’m calling it a keeper.  And all for the low price of a magnetic whiteboard calendar, colored magnets and a fancy shmancy Excel spreadsheet assembled by yours truly.

Do they get paid for any of these chores?  Not exactly, unless you consider tokens valuable currency.  These are just expectations for being part of the family, living here rent-free and enjoying all the other perks(dance lessons, sports teams, and the like) that would otherwise feel like entitlements.

Self-maintenance does not keep an entire house clean, you say?  You’re absolutely right.  Enter part two of our beloved chore system: the family chores.

chore chart

We post this laminated spreadsheet to our refrigerator and rotate chores every month.  Each kid gets a number and everything associated with that number for that particular month.  The first two rows are daily chores and the rest are done once a week on Fridays.  During the summer we add a few responsibilities, including outside chores on Saturdays but this is how we get the job done, in a nutshell.

The beauty of this is two-fold:

  1.  Each kid gets an entire month to perfect their form on a particular task.
  2. They can’t really complain about so-and-so doing more or less than they, because eventually they will ALL get a turn with the less-desirable tasks.

As a side note, I try to even the chores out so that no one can justifiably lament having to do one set of chores over another.  For instance, pretty much all of the kids despise being number 2, when it comes to sweeping the kitchen floor after dinner every day.  But, when Friday rolls around and number 2’s  weekly chores don’t involve scrubbing any toilets, they are thanking their lucky stars.  Everyone’s happy.  As much as one can be while dealing with dirt.

If you want to tailor this chart to your own family needs, feel free to use this template.  It’s a jpg so you can print itat any size you please.

Still, we do provide an allowance,  An allowance which is paid monthly and which is loosely(okay, strictly) tied to the completion of one’s weekly chores.  They get $1 per year of age, so $12 for a twelve-year-old.  They are paid on the first Friday of the month (if they complete their chores, that is).  Each Friday thereafter, they can earn bonus bucks – $1 the second week they complete their chores on time, $2 the third week, $3 the fourth week, and $4 if they’re lucky enough to have five Fridays that particular month.  We like the incremental way of paying them because it makes each week count.

For instance, let’s say 12-year-old Joe completes his chores on the first Friday of February, doesn’t on the second week, and then finishes off the month with two weeks in a row of completed tasks.  He would receive $12 for the first week (nothing for the second week), then $1 for the next week and $2 for the last for a grand total of $15 that month.  If he had completed his chores all four weeks of the month he would have gotten $12 for the first week, $1 for the second, $2 for the third, and $3 for the fourth.  In a four-week month, his maximum potential earnings are $18.  Consistency pays off.

If anyone wants to do anything above and beyond self-maintenance chores and family chores, we have paid chores.  These include things like washing windows, cleaning the car, or scrubbing down mom and dad’s shower, my personal favorite.

Self-maintenance chores.  Family chores.  Paid chores.  Got it?  It’s a thing of beauty, I tell you.