“Do your chores.” “Have you finished your chores?” “Did you check the chore board?” “Why aren’t your chores done?” How many times have I asked these questions during my 27 years of parenting? With 8 children, I really am not up to doing the math at the moment.
“How do I get my kids to do their chores?” “What chores should my kids be doing?” “How do you keep track of who does which chore?” I get these questions from young moms. Let me tell you first, I am not a great housekeeper. Getting the house clean is a life-long struggle for me. Teaching our children that our work must get done and that we each have responsibilities in life is our job as a parent.
{this post contains an affiliate link. read my full disclosure here}
There is not one right or wrong way to assign and tackle chores. There is not a perfect system. The key to success is having plan, communicating that plan, and following through with that plan. We’ve used many different ideas over the years, but let me show you the system that’s worked best for us, going on 20 years now.
The story behind our chore board and how it works:
I asked Handy-Dandy-Hubbie to pound nails into a board in 4 rows (one row per child), leaving space on the left for names. He used a couple of scrap pieces from our cedar siding. He had it ready in under a half hour.
Next I painted the names of each child along the left edge. I then took my list of jobs/chores/habits I needed to be attended to each day and made a picture card for each. The little cards for organizing embroidery floss
For habits such as make your bed and brush your teeth I made 4 copies, one for each child. For regular chores like meal prep, meal clean up, wash table, etc. we used a rotating system, so I made one card per chore and then rotated them monthly. Anyone noticing in the above picture that Noah tried to pull a fast one and switched out his ‘brush teeth’ card for loading dishwasher, rest assured he did NOT get away with it!
At the beginning of each month chores from child #1 are passed down to child #2, #2 was passed to #3, #3 was passed to #4 and #4 were passed to #1. These little cards are so much easier than writing out lists or printing off new lists or keeping track of everyone’s lists. At times, I have had each child turn their card over when the had finished that particular chore.
To create the cards, originally, I drew a little picture freehand to represent the chore. I still have a few for posterity’s sake, but with clip art and images so readily available these days I searched and found cute little pictures to update and give a new spin on things for our younger children.
on the left, children’s names 20 years ago
5 years ago – on the right, next round of children’s names
A tip for Moms of Many — as the older 4 kids grew up and out of our little system, I had Luke make wooden tags on which I painted the next 4 children’s names. He drilled a couple of holes in each tag and added a couple of nails so I could hang them. Sentimental Mom that I am, I just couldn’t paint over the top of my the ‘original four’. Seeing their names makes me smile, takes me on a walk down memory lane. Fun!
This little system has been a wonderful tool over the years. It works beautifully, but just like any system, it works best when Mom stays on top of things and follow through and check up on progress. And that, dear friends, is a topic for yet another post!
linking up this post at some of these wonderful places
You are really creative!! I only have 1 child left at home but this may be just the ticket ti get him to remember everything he needs to do!! Not that his spoiled little Kester has to do much.
Hey Amanda! It would work for 1 or 4 or 10 🙂 When we first set up this system, he made a small one for me. I posted it in the kitchen and had my daily tasks right in front of me.
I like this idea. Since you are a veterine and are blessed to see the fruits of your labor already while still bringing up more I have a question for you. We have tasks our eight and six year old are able and expected to do each week in addition to our homeschool system that takes a varied amount of time each day depending on indevidual drive. We rescently received our first lamplighter theator catalog and the children each selected something to save up some money to purchase with their spend soon money (when we pop opne the piggy banks we sort – give to God, save for later, spend soon). We want them to know they don’t get paid for everything they do in the house but we want to have a list of tasks they can do to earn money for the fun things they want to help them earn the value of money. It’s in nicles, dimes, and quarters and I have a list up for them, but I was wondering if you have experience in this area. Maybe I should make a post on my blog about this but it seemed to kind of have something to do with chores and you are a veterine homeschool momma so I thought I would ask here. Thanks for your help or insight in this area of mommying. *smile* Sincerely, Mommy of two growing blessings & so much more!
Sounds like you have a wonderful system in place already 🙂 We have used many different chore, reward, allowance systems in our family through the years. With each system there were chores or jobs not associated with money. They help make the mess, we provide for all their basic needs, we’re a team and we need to know how to work together, serve each other, be good stewards of the physical blessings God has given us.
Listing out jobs around the house they can do above and beyond their daily chores is a great way for them to work for something they want. This is especially a good idea as they grow older – they can choose to fill their time with good-old fashioned hard work and get paid for it! With the money they earned, we’ve also encouraged our children to give, save and spend in a similar manner as you described. In order to teach them how to manage money well and make good choices while they are still under our roof, we do give them a monthly allowance. In our family, once they ‘start’ school we pay each child a dollar for each birthday. The 5 year old gets $5, the 10 year old gets $10. They are expected to give a portion to back to God, and to set some into savings, and then they have spending money.
I doing this, they can choose to buy their lunch when we go to town, or get a new water toy on a hot summer day, or purchase a birthday gift for their sister, or pick up crafting supplies for a project they want to try.
When they reach age 12 we switch gears and they are given a larger sum of money with more responsiblity – they purchase for themselves their own clothing and personal hygiene items and entertainment. Most of our children have automatically become thrifty and wise at this point, because Dad doesn’t hand out $$ just because some asks.
That kind of sums up our system and experience. It’s worked well for us, and our adult children have all stayed out of debt and do not live overly extravagant lives, learning to be content in their circumstances. Teaching them the principles laid out in God’s word and my husband’s good sense in these matters (I’m the spend-thrift one! I’m the one who’s not a good money manager!) are what I give the credit to.
Keep up the good work Blessings!
Love this! We just have a dry erase system, but this is so easy to customize for the kids! Thanks for sharing it at Mom’s Library too!
dry erase is a great idea, Ashley. That was the very first chart system I used long long time ago 🙂
Have a great week!
Well I really like it especially the little embroidery floss holders that can be moved around so easily! Featuring it on Mom’s Library this week; thanks for linking up with us!
thank you 🙂
love this system as a mom of 6 and grandma to 3 that live in house as well, it can get quite crazy When our children were growing up we had a chore system and lots of nagging I love your chore board
come see us at shopannies(dot)blogspot(dot)com
Thanks, Angie. Sounds like you do have a houseful – any system that makes things run more smoothly is a winner. Our chore board really diminished the nagging 😉 Thanks for stopping by today!