The Children’s Chores and Free Printable

I wanted to share what’s working for us these days regarding chores (we call them jobs). We’ve had a number of systems and charts over the years. Some worked well, others not so much. Some systems worked for a time, but then life shifted and so did our needs. I encourage you to try a variety of things. If one system doesn’t seem to be a good fit for you and/or your children, don’t give up. Just try something else until you find something that works.

Since we homeschool, everyone is home all day and our house gets quite messy. I really feel that we should all work as a team to clean up the day’s mess, not just mom and dad doing it all. I don’t ask for perfection. I don’t think perfection is really even possible in a home with children … let alone 5 of them! And I don’t want perfection anyway. I’d much rather our home feel comfortable and lived-in, than sterile and unwelcoming.

On that same note, things can quickly go from lived-in to utter chaos around here. So we take a few minutes a few times a day to put things back in relative order. There are some days when we’re running errands, or visiting with family, when morning or evening jobs don’t get done. There’s probably 1-2 days like that per week. We have a large extended family that lives locally, so it’s not uncommon to have a few birthday parties and family dinners each month. No day or week is the same.

Having the kids participate in cleaning up what is mostly their own mess isn’t just about my hubby and I not wanting to (or being able to) keep up with the mess on our own, though. It’s about teaching life skills to our children. Some day they’re going to be living on their own, most likely with a spouse and children. It’s important that they know how to fold laundry, clean a bathroom, and cook a decent meal. These are all things that we, as adults, must do. I feel it’s a worthwhile investment in their future to start training them in these skills early.

I also consider it a gift to my future daughter/son inlaws.

Don’t get me wrong. There are days or even seasons in my life where I’m either not staying on top of this as well as I’d like to, or my attention is being pulled in other directions. That happens. Those are the days when the house is either messier than I’d like to admit, or I’m up later at night putting the house back together because I didn’t manage to enforce our jobs lists. Those days/weeks happen. I just try not to let that be the habit.

We usually start jobs around age 4. Before that, the little ones may be asked to pick up a specific set of toys that they dumped out on the floor, or to take their dirty laundry to the laundry room if they’re old enough. They still participate, they just don’t necessarily have set chores.

The hardest part for me, personally, is taking the time to teach a child how to do a task, and then following up to make sure they did it correctly. But that’s also the most important part for mom. Last year I gave my then 7 year old the job of sweeping the kitchen floor after dinner. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the poor kid did not know how to properly sweep a floor. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to get frustrated with him for that. I needed to take 15 minutes and give him a sweeping lesson – and probably reteach it again a few days later. And even after the lesson, expecting perfection was not realistic at a fairly young age. But I think we as parents can usually tell if a child gave a good effort, or if they rushed through it as fast as they could just to get it done.

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