What housework/chores are your children responsible for? How do you keep them motivated?
There are days when I would love to wave a magic wand and have a perfectly clean home, but unfortunately, magic wands are in short supply around here. Regardless of whether our children are little or teens or even young adults still living at home, keeping a tidy house is much easier when everyone has a role. Plus it’s important that our children learn to clean so they can take care of their own homes one day and it’s important that they contribute as well as consume in our homes.
It can be challenging to figure out just what children’s household responsibilies should look like. For little children it may be as simple as having a quick 5 minute pick up each night or unloading the silverware from the dishwasher.
When our six children were young we had a basket on the stairs where random items ended up—socks, books, toys, etc. We established the “Take 2” rule: Everyone going upstairs had to take 2 items each time they went. It was easy and worked like a charm!
As our children grew, their responsibilities grew as well and involved cleaning bathrooms, washing cars, mowing lawns and helping with household projects. If I’m being truthful, some days it seemed easier to do everything myself rather than remind, cajole, and nag them to get their jobs done. Once the teen years hit with afternoon and evening practices, rehearsals, and other meetings, it became even more challenging to make sure everyone was lending a hand to keep our home under control.
Yet, having the entire family involved in the upkeep of a clean home is important! Allyson Reynolds in her post: “Making Family Work…Work” had this to say about the reason to have everyone in the home contribute:
“It may seem like a lot of work to get your family to work, but once your children know how to do housework after months and years of practice, not only will they become an invaluable help to you, but their confidence will grow in their ability to do “grown up” work as well as their ability to make a valuable contribution to the family. Plus they’ll never be that roommate or spouse that causes issues by not doing his or her share.”
Although it can be challenging to develop a system to involve everyone in the housework, the rewards will be great, family ties will strengthen and important lessons will be learned. So we can all use more ideas in this area!
We’d love to hear from you! Please share your answers below in the comments.
QUESTION #1: WHAT HOUSEWORK ARE YOUR CHILDREN RESPONSIBLE FOR?
QUESTION #2: HOW DO YOU KEEP THEM MOTIVATED?
For more suggestions on developing family housework strategies visit:
Two Tipe for a Clearn and Happy Home
Housework as a Relationship-Building Activity (podcast episode)
Our 13 year old switches the wash and sorts the clean laundry into baskets. She does this job willingly because she and work and watch a show. Our 8 year old does floors and garbage. He vacuums and empties garbages once a week and sweeps the kitchen several times a week. We just moved into a smaller home which the kids love because it’s so much faster to do jobs. They stay motivated because we all work together at the same time so we can all play when we’re done!
This is such a great pattern to establish! I’m a big fan of kids doing their own laundry—it lightens the load immensely!
I like how you talked about working together at the same time so that everyone has a deadline and something fun to look forward to. We all need incentives!
We have jobs that we are assigned for the week. Each child has an area to vacuum, a kitchen job, and an area to clean. Plus they are responsible for keeping their room clean and making their bed. Our oldest is in charge of washing and drying the clothes in his laundry hamper. He actually enjoys doing it.
We do our big cleaning on Saturday mornings. I make each child a checklist of the things that they need to do before playing and then they can check it off. For the smaller kids, I draw pictures to go with the words. The rest of the week we maintain our areas with vacuuming on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I love th checklist idea!
I switched to a ZONE defense. Each kid has a zone, a common area in the house that they are in charge of keeping clean. My 6 year old keeps the entry way dusted and clutter free, my 4 year old unloads most of the dishes (I do the breakables). The older kids have the tougher jobs, the kitchen catch all table, the tv room and the bathroom. On top of their zones they have to keep their bedrooms and bathrooms clean and put away their clean laundry. They also will have to do extra chores depending on what needs done. I am proud of them for knowing how to work and last summer my oldest three started a business in our neighborhood of cleaning up dog poop out of yards and dog sitting. My 14 yr old has started thinking about where he wants to work when he turns 15. It is sometimes easier to do things myself and sometimes I do, but wow! Do they appreciate it when I put away their laundry or clean their zone for them!
Are you a Fly Lady fan? This sounds similar but I love how you have adapted it for children.
I have six children, ages 14 to 2. The three oldest children are each responsible for cleaning one of the bathrooms of the house each week, cleaning their own room to the point that it can be swept and vacuumed, and then some specific assignment. One child washes the high traffic windows every week, and the low traffic windows once a month inside and out. Another child dusts the fans monthly, while another child empties the trash is each week. The younger kids have responsibilities for their own bedroom and an area of the house that they pick up, but they complete it with a parent. Daily, each child has a zone of the house they are supposed to tidy, and we have a family bin called the “put away bin” that anything that doesn’t belong in that room can go in. Hypothetically, we empty that bin each day, but realistically it’s done about every other day. We have a dinner routine that starts 15 minutes before dinner time where they tidy their area, have dinner, clean up dinner for 15 minutes altogether, then empty the put away bin. Even when it’s not perfect, it works so much better than before the routine! Lots of nights various children are gone at lessons, rehearsals, practices, but we still just move forward. To keep track of the weekly, biweekly, and monthly chores, I use an app called ChoreMonster so I can schedule chores on a routine basis. I’ve used it for several years now and love that I can schedule chores daily, weekly, monthly, or just one time.
Such great ideas. Thanks for sharing. We do zones in our family too – so nice for a child to have an area of the house to focus on. I especially like the idea of the “put away bin” and I love that you have your children helping with weekly deep cleaning stuff, not just simple pick-up. Children can wash windows and clean fans and it’s good for them!
I will have to check out ChoreMonster! I’m curious if it could link to teenager’s smart phones? I’d love to be able to schedule my teens chores and have them be responsible for checking the list and marking them off.
Yes, the kids can have the app on their phone or Kindle. It syncs among devices. Parents use “MOTHERSHP” and it links all children in Choremonster and Landra, the “teen version.”
Thank you–I’m going to check it out!
I used to send my kids off to do different jobs on the job list every Saturday morning then when I’d go to check their progress, they had often gotten off-task. I hated nagging them and checking on them and feeling angry that they hadn’t done a good job despite instructions that seemed plenty clear to me. Then I realized that for some of my children, staying on task without my guidance wasn’t realistic and that often I hadn’t given my kids clear enough instructions. I learned that when I assigned them jobs then traded off working with different children, they stayed on task much better and I could show them exactly how to do things so that they could do it on their own as needed. Plus I often had great conversations with my kids while we worked side by side.
I love family systems and we use zones for getting things tidy for the end of the day…we also work together on Saturdays to do housework. One thing I REALLY like is using a lot of good motivation and incentive, especially when starting to establish habits. We have a ticket system in place for all sorts of ‘above and beyond’ behaviors, and so when I notice they jump up to do their work, or are trying hard, or anything that I can praise them on, I will give tickets (they can spend later for special one on one time or other things…). I used to think they need to learn to work to contribute but now I think we need to make this as rewarding as we can -especially when little and getting in the swing of things. One thing I LOVE to do, is to say “wait! We forgot one thing” and then have them come back and simply admire what good work they did and tell them to tell themselves good job. Super fun and cute but important to feel good about contributing. 🙂