The Chore Chart!!

It's finally here! The long-awaited chore chart post! A couple of people have been asking me to post this, so here it is. You'll never believe this, but over the last, oh, 7 or so years, many moms I have known have been uber impressed that my kids do chores. Crazy, huh? I thought all kids did chores. Silly me. Here in the House, we are firm believers in giving responsibilities to the kids. Not only that, but let's be real - there is no way this many people can live in one house and the kids not have responsibilities. We start them doing chores on a regular basis somewhere around 3.5 to 4 years old. At that age they like helping and they are able to help without making more work for everyone else. Contrast that with the exuberant 2.5 year old who wants desperately to "help." Now that Landon is 4, he is finally a part of the chore chart. He has been for quite some time, actually! And the chart I'm posting here is an old one. He now has a couple of other small jobs listed in his little row on the chart.

Our chore chart has gone through several evolutions over the years. Sometimes this is due to the kids needing a change to keep them motivated, and sometimes they just outgrow their assigned chores. Right now we are in a really good place with our chore chart. And it's pretty, too! But the best thing about it is that there are quite a few jobs around here that most of them can do without help, so our current chart rotates all the chores so the kids don't have to do the same thing all the time. There are 4 different jobs each day that the 4 oldest kids do. They all have something they really don't like doing, but with this chart, they don't have to do that chore very frequently. Over the last 6 months it has worked really well for us. Here's what the chart looks like:

It's a beauty, huh? At the beginning of every month, I print a weekly calendar for each week of the month. Then I take MY markers out of the cabinet and transform it into that thing of beauty. Then I get really excited as I fill in the chores. First things first - the job of cleaning the ferret cage. Those little critters stink to high heaven just by virtue of being ferrets. Add that to the fact that they poop their own body weight every single day, and you have one stinky mess every single day. Sunday is our chore-free day, but cleaning the ferret cage is the one job that absolutely must be done, no question, even on Sunday. They do this in pairs so that the smaller ones can help, but don't have to do the whole thing themselves. They couldn't do it themselves anyway. I also Febreeze Haley's room (where the u-reeka, u-stinka creatures live) at least once a week.

The next jobs on the chart are the Monday, Wednesday, Friday jobs. If I had my way, every square inch of carpet in the House would be vacuumed every single day. That is a tad unreasonable at this point in our lives. I used to vacuum every day when we had a smaller house and 3 kids. Now I have more space and less time to vacuum it. So I handed some of the vacuuming off to the kids. They are responsible for the rugs downstairs (there are 3 of them), the stairs, and the cabinet where we keep our cats' litter box. I love my kitties, even though they throw their litter around when they dig in the box. Since one of the cats belongs to the kids, they have to vacuum the litter box cabinet. They don't feed the cats or scoop the box, but they do have to do something for their cat, so this is it. The other M-W-F job is sweeping the wood floors downstairs. On Mondays, I clean the wood floors myself, so that job is replaced with vacuuming the living room furniture. Those jobs rotate so that everybody does 3 of the 4 every week.

Tuesday and Saturday are filled in next. They are the dusting days. The kids dust 4 rooms - the living room, the dining room, the playroom, and the guest room. And again, this is a rotating job, so they each do 2 of those rooms every week. The next week they will do the other 2. Erin is not a particularly good duster even though this is an easy job. She is just not very thorough, which she isn't with most of her chores...Lord help the man she marries. At least until she has kids. She will be very well trained in making chore charts!

Thursday's jobs are pretty involved. Well, except one of them. They have to sweep the front porch and walkway. That's the cream puff job they wait a whole month to get on Thursdays. Whoever isn't lucky enough to get that one may end up cleaning a bathroom. The kids clean 2 of the 3 bathrooms in the House. The downstairs one is small, so it's pretty quick. The upstairs one is the kids' bathroom, and it has more counter space, 2 sinks (that usually have toothpaste in them - ICK!!), and 2 mirrors. The kids have to clean the toilet inside and out, wipe down the counters and sinks with Clorox wipes, and clean the mirrors. I don't make them do tubs or floors. I would have to do those again after they, so I just go ahead and do them myself. If they escape the bathroom chores, but don't get the sweeping the porch chore, they have to take out the trash. Friday is trash collection day, so they have to take out ALL the trash in the House on Thursday. Then they have to haul the Herbie Curbie down to the road and bring the recycling down as well.

Finally, I remind them all at the bottom of the chart that everyone must pick up their room, put away any laundry that is in their cubby in the laundry room, and check the basket on the stairs for homeless items that I have picked up during the day. They also get another gentle reminder. The chore chart is posted on the refrigerator with one of my favorite magnets, which addresses anyone who may question why they have to do all these jobs.....