I usually wait until I have tried something and it’s proven to work before I tell you about it, but since this is a modified version of the chore chart we’ve been using, and there was so much pressure from my Facebook peeps I figured I’d tell you what we’re going to try out and then let you know how it worked out later.
I’ve been working out the kinks of these charts for about 2 months. In all honesty I worked really hard on it for awhile and then put it away and got it back out to finish them up. There’s a lot of thought that goes into these things! The old chore chart worked so well, but now that our 3 and half year old is really ready to take on more work than just helping me (as in, he’s been asking “What’s my job, Mama?” every time the others are cleaning).
Also, since the others have gotten older: ages 5, 7, and 9 they need more responsibility. And I’ve been wanting to incorporate deep cleaning chores for awhile as well. I looked at the 4 Moms 35 Kids sites: Raising Olives, The Common Room, Life in a Shoe, and Smockity Frocks for ideas. I split up our areas and jobs as evenly as possible and took into account their ages. Here they are in all their glory.
Yes, I let the 9 year old light a candle. With my supervision.
Yes, I have the 7 year old make my bed. Because he likes to, I know strange, right? And he cleans “my” bathroom because we all use it. The oldest is the only one that uses the bee bathroom (which is a fancy name for the kids’ bathroom because there are bees painted on the walls).
Again, I have the 5 year old vacuum because it’s the cool thing to do. And consider that she is only picking up what is left over after everyone gets their own items out of those 2 rooms. Really it’s not slave labor around here, I promise.
The 3 year old will be putting away silverware because he loves too. He’ll do that under my supervision and while I’m putting away the other dishes. We have wheeled laundry baskets that make gathering laundry more of a sport than a chore. The kitchen pick up will be while I’m loading dirty dishes and cleaning the kitchen.
Here are our new Table Duties after each meal. Again, small changes. They’ve all been carrying their own plates to scrape them in the trash and then setting them in the sink for a good while now. Yes, even the 3 year old. And they’ve all been helping to clear the table, but with no order to it. The chores are laid out according to color. The lighter blue is for everyone. Then they chose their colors on their Daily and Deep Cleaning Chores above and I used them here for easy recognition.
This is the Bedtime Routine we already follow I just printed it out so they can see it.
But then I made a Morning Routine Chart as well. We do some of these things, but not all of them, and we need to do all of them. Routinely. It may seem like a lot to ask them to clean their rooms before coming out in the morning, but I just reduced their rooms to nearly nothing (yes, a post to follow!) so really all they have to “clean” is to take their laundry to the laundry room, make sure their stuffed animals are on their beds, and take back whatever they got out for bedtime.
Again small changes. A little at a time. Most of this we’ve already been doing. If your children are not used to picking up anything or are mega fit throwers when it comes to picking up (like our oldest was once upon a time and our 5 year old still is at times) don’t expect to write these out for your house and have it work. We’ve slowly worked into this after years of trying other things. And we’ll see how this goes. We’ll keep what works, change what needs to be changed, and dump what doesn’t work at all. I’ll let you know.
How do things get done around your house? What works for you?
