New chore list
We change the children's chores once every month or two. Here is our newest list, instituted on the first of February.
As usual, we changed the structure slightly. This time, each of the older children is entirely responsible for a room. Rather than assigning one child to vacuum, another to dust... we now have assigned one to completely maintain an area of the house.
This doesn't mean that the others may leave messes with impunity. If the Mistress of the Living Room finds shoes or 676 Legos on the living room floor, she may call the owner to put them away.
Deanna (13yo)
Dining room: pick up floor, clear table, push in chairs, vacuum, dust and straighten bookshelves, wash window as necessary, etc.
Kaitlyn (11yo)
Bathroom & Laundry room: clean, wipe and straighten as necessary; call for owners of dirty laundry to come 'n' get it, sweep.
Lydia (10yo)
Living room: pick up floor, dust and straighten bookshelves and TV stand, clear couches and end table, vacuum, wash window and mirror as necessary, vacuum under couch cushions.
Megan (8yo)
Kitchen: clear and wipe island, counters and stove, put away clean dishes, stack dirty dishes, sweep. As necessary jobs: wipe out microwave, wipe down fronts of cabinets, straighten container cupboard, wash windows, empty trash.
Natalie (7yo)
Animals: feed and water dog, cat, gerbils, rabbits, notify me when they are low on food.
Becca (5yo)
Empty bedroom and bathroom trash cans
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The residents of each bedroom are responsible for their own laundry as a group. The baby and toddler have their clothes in the room with Hubby and me, so I take care of the laundry for 4 people. This often means paying a young entrepreneur 25 cents to start a load for me.
The 4 oldest do dinner dishes, while the 5 and 7yo usually clear the table after meals. I often do breakfast and/or lunch dishes with the 5 and 7yo.
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Filed under: parenting
We use the same system – each child has a room. We do rooms rather than tasks because I want them to “see the big picture”. We switch every week (we tried everyday, but often something would be left undone one day and it wasn’t fair to the next kid).
Our children age 8, 7, and 6 split up the living room, playroom/schoolroom, and kitchen.
LR kid has to pick it up everyday, vacuum, and put away clutter. It’s the easiest room.
Playroom is easy and hard. Basically all they have to do is pick up the toys and put them away, and vacuum. But we have a Montessori style classroom with open shelves and a one year old baby – sometimes that’s challenging!
Kitchen has to sweep, unload dishwasher, clear and wipe table after dinner, and wipe the benches and chairs.
Our 4 yo is in charge of the hallway (putting away toys, stray shoes, etc.), feeding the cat everyday, and emptying the trash.
They do their own rooms and put away their own clothes.
Chore time is 4:30-5:00 pm (and after dinner for the kitchen kid) – Daddy comes home at 5:15 and their favorite television show is on at 5 pm, so if chore is done they may watch. Otherwise… too bad. Also they don’t eat dinner if they haven’t done their chore. I’m a meanie, I know. But none have ever gone hungry!
We also do a weekly “deeper clean” on Fridays to get the room ready for the next kid (we switch on Sat.) That’s the dusting, crevice tool vacuuming, shelf washing, window wiping day.
Hopefully they will know a lot more about keeping house than I did when I got married, I was totally clueless about what it took EVERY DAY to keep things in order!
Mama Says
A friend showed me your site a while ago and keeps me up-to-date on all interesting postings coming through. Today I take the initiative and post a comment.
My comment: you have taught me something new. Thanks!
My kids (9,7,6,3 and baby) have been given jobs (baby not yet!)to do in the house, which are paid like real jobs, according to how well it is done. We work on specific jobs and there is a lot of turn over. This is a challenge for our 7 year old especially (she is the one who forgets to put on underwear in the morning… hard to keep on track of Mom’s ever changing cleaning schedule). So perhaps we should change over to the “week” or “monthly” room-schedule. I think I will give it a try.
I do have one question: do you pay for these chores to be done? We pay for the jobs yet there are ample chores which we expect (without pay) to be done daily as well to ensure that they learn that there are simply things which need to be done without monetary gratification.
If you pay them, do they get to use the money as they wish, or do you teach them accounting? (We go for accounting, so I would really be interested in how you do this. Our jobs each have a monetary value, which is doubled if the job is well done and without my mentioning that it is to be done. The sum of all jobs –income– is calculated weekly and then divided up to various budget categories. For example they can have 15% for pocket money, 10% tithes, 10% school stuff –don’t loose your pencils or chew away your erasers! That costs you your hard earned money!– various others and then 25% for dowery. — this concept I have from http://www.doorposts.net, see stewardship street.)
Andrea
LOL my dd Kaytlin is in charge of the bathrooms, so we got a chuckle reading this! We put a kid in charge of each room, two on the main living room, a big kid and a small kid.
Then we each have one day a week to cook and clean the kitchen, including dad.
I need to find better consequences for not doing chores, because they don’t care enough about allowance, and they don’t “remember” their restrictions, so I constantly have to catch them breaking the rules and correct them.
I don’t pay mine for doing chores. (Well, they can earn extra money for extra big chores, but they never want to!) They don’t get privileges for doing basic chores – I tell them, “We are a family and families work together.”
However, they are not *supposed* to get their allowance until after room inspection for their bedrooms. So, they don’t get their allowance if their room isn’t clean; but we don’t pay them specifically for cleaning their room… allowance is a privilege (and may be revoked or repo’d as parents see fit.)
We don’t allow privileges until chores are done because my oldest son doesn’t always process things well (sp. ed.) and also loses track of time. He needs an immediate motivator – like snacktime – or it won’t get done. Telling him “no allowance on Saturday” is too far away for it to be meaningful.
Also, a trip to the dollar store or where ever to spend the allowance is also a seperate privilege – so if they can’t behave at the store, they won’t be allowed to go!
We don’t pay our children for daily chores, but there are always opportunities for a motivated child to earn money by doing extra jobs.
When they do earn money, they pay a 10% tithe, then divide the remainder equally between savings and spending.
They can occasionally use their savings for worthy purchases with a significant price tag, but these must be carefully considered and approved.
AS,
Thanks for commenting – it’s always fun to hear from new people!
You seem to have a well-thought out plan for your children’s money. I find it hard to keep up with just tithes, spending & savings. How do you keep track, or do they do it all on their own?
Dear Kim (can I call you Kim? hehe)
One of our paid jobs is “accountant”, that is the kid who gets to tally up the earnings, calculate and note all budgeted categories and then pay the cash. I am the helper. My five year old (oops, recently turned 6) is developing a fine sense of counting when it is his turn, we use beans or buttons and he of course gets a lot more help from me than the two older ones. I am considering getting my oldest to start keeping her own “books” where she can also keep track of what she spends her money on.
There are advantages to ensuring that your kids have an opportunity to earn money through work at home!
For example, as employer/employee relationship you see your kids (and they see you) in a different light and discipline issues can be tackled in a very different manner (like laziness: no money for a job not done. And the opposite is true: initiative, double money for job well done without reminders…). Or the wonderful fact that the older ones (as they are really just beginning to show interest in “what other kids do” have a different understanding of what it means to go to the movies than their friends who have those activities highly or completely subsidised (sp?) by mom and dad. And of course there is the plus of working on math skills and organization skills in a completely different context.
For organization skills, the kids need to see what kind of extra activities they have for the coming week and then try to avoid having “job overload” on a day when they are invited to a birthday party or have a hike planned etc. They learn to get a few “jobs” done earlier in the week or later. In essence they are learning to budget their time as well.
Back to keeping track. I have one ring binder with dividers for the following categories: weekly schedule (blank) with room for noting chores done by each child (I just write the earning in instead of what they did–what they were supposed to do is posted for kids and mom to see on the kitchen door). On this sheet I note the children’s earnings in the top 1/2, the bottom 1/2 is for the budget calculations–10% here, 5% there.
Then there are 5 dividers for the spreadsheets, one for each child (space for baby to grow in to!). Here we note comings and goings of what has been earned and spent, although this is still just general. My oldest daughter (most independent spender) has with this chart no way of noting what she spent her money on, simply that it was spent. With her, I would like to encourage her to take each budget column and create seperate spreadsheets for each column to be able to understand where the money goes over a longer period of time.
By the way, I do not homeschool my kids, I live in Germany, where parents are jailed or kids removed from homes because of “pyscho” parents who deny thier children the privilage of state schools. But I do wish I could homeschool, so I pick those subjects the school notoriously neglect and find creative and useful ways to teach my own at home. The subject of finances is wonderful because we can teach so much about God and His Word when we teach this subject (biblical virtues like faithfulness, diligence, contenuity (sp?) etc.). My next step, starting this spring, is to tackle the story of the 10 Minas in the New Testament. It is about increasing your initial financial situation. So we will embark of a study of entrepreniurialship and see if we can increase our savings in other ways than simply earning interest at a bank or working for Mom.
In the end, I have my hands freed up to pursue my own small business, take care of our younger ones and prepare various projects and lessons for the afternoons (kids only go to school until 1 pm here, so there is a lot of time together for homeschooling still).
And it is not that hard to keep up with the kids and if they have or not done their jobs because if they dont do it, I find I have to (it is unfair for the next kid to do the double job if his/her sibling didn’t do a job the day before!).
It isn’t perfect. But it has potential.
Keep on bloggin’!
I will be reading from Germany and allowing myself to be inspired by those of you who are in those homeschool trenches and battling it out (hopefully not with the kids, here the battle is with society, politics and legal system…)
Andrea
Thanks for this post!
I recently listened to Vision Forum’s audio “24 Hours is all you get” cd, and it has really helped me maintain the perspective that you have to learn what schedule is best for your family and consistently putit into practice! I wrote a post a few days ago about some of my frustrations as a wife and mom due to my lack of training in domestic skills as a younger woman and how I feel like some days all I’m doing is making up for lost time!
But anyway, God has been so gracious to me, and I am trying to daily cheerfully get my housework done (now with my kids’ help) and cook good meals and have a peaceful home for my husband when he’s finished working for the day. One question I have: My kids are still so young (3, almost 2, and 4 months old – and we’d like to have more children after I feel better about my body’s strength – deliveries have been great, but pregnancy has been so hard!) Anyway, they LOVE helping me do the dishes, laundry, dust, mop, etc. but usually when the daily work is done, it’s time for lunch, and then they are in dire need of naps (and you know the baby just goes along with it all) . . . I feel like I need to be teaching my oldest her letters and reading to her more, and I usually only read to her 3 or 4 books a day or a half-hour. I feel like my house is super neat and clean and they are learning a lot about that, but many times when I want to sit with them and read, they just want to play because they’ve been working all day! They know that family worship time after dinner is a time to be still and sit with us, but even after that they go crazy running around the living room because they have so much pent-up energy! And as a result, after we’re finished with the “musts” on our list for the day, there is a lot of arguing because they haven’t had a chance yet to play and fight over toys, etc. (I know that’s not the main reason for that, though – just selfishness!) But anyway, when your oldest three or four were still very young, how did you balance work/play/reading times? Thanks for answering this when you have a chance (and anyone else, too)! I’ll be checking back for responses to this . . .
I am trying so hard to glorify God with my kids at home and provide for them biblical training in a happy home…..
Oh, sorry! I linked to the wrong post in my comment.
Here is the correct one.
And I realized reading my comment that it may seem like I never let my kids play, or that all we do is work all day. No, it’s not that way, but the thing that got me thinking about this is lately all I hear from my older two is, “Can we go play? Play? Go play?” And we haven’t even spent a bunch of time away from home or in the car!