Chore Packs

We do believe that it is important for the girls to participate in the chores that help keep our household going. We do this for several reasons. For one, we think the first place to teach Christian service to others is in the home and a great way to do that is through chores. The girls learn to work together and learn what it takes to keep our household running smoothly. We also believe that it is important for them to learn the housekeeping tasks that they will someday need to run their own households.

We start chores early. Our 4 year old daughter is a "helper" - she can set the table, help get the laundry out of the dryer, dry dishes, put clothes away - she loves doing anything that is "helping". My other two daughters are 10 and 7 and have their scheduled chores for each day.

I have tried many different chore systems in the past and have finally found one that I love - Managers of Their Chores. While this program does take a bit of work on the front-end, the results are SO worth the effort. Basically, I had to go through and figure out what all the chores were, who could help with or do what, assigned chores to individuals, figured out about how much time each one should take, and then I divided them into daily, weekly or monthly chores. I then sub-divided those into morning, afternoon or evening chores.

By using this chore program, my goal is to teach the chore until it becomes second-nature and can be done without reminding or remedial work. As the girls get older, we change the chores around some, moving some down to younger and adding more complexity or responsibility to the older.

My goal is not to push off my work onto the girls ~ actually implementing chores turns out to be MORE work for me initially. One important thing I've discovered in implementing chores is that they will not work if I am not willing to take the time to TRAIN how to do the chore correctly, OVERSEE how the chore is being done until the girls learn how to do them correctly, REVIEW how the chore was completed once they are being done on their own and do REMEDIAL training if necessary until the chore is learned correctly.

This takes time, effort and scheduling on my part, otherwise I am not being diligent in teaching diligence! Once the individual chores are learned though, I am amazed at how quickly and efficiently we can get through our work and how much extra time we have to do FUN things we want to do. On those days that we get off to the wrong start and skip chores or procrastinate, the day just doesn't seem to fall into place right!

To help understand how I've put mine together, I've taken pictures of our chore packs. Here's how ours go together. I have them divided as follows for my two oldest daughters:

Daily morning
Daily afternoon
Daily evening
Monday - special chores (laundry)
Friday - extended chore day (we do are usual daily chores plus extra weekly chores)
Saturday - special chores

Here are some photos so you can see how it comes together - I have the cardstock color coded for each girl - my oldest daughter's cards are white, my middle daughter's cards are pink and our youngest daughter will have yellow cards later this year:

Daily Morning:


Daily Afternoon:


Daily Evening:


Monday Morning:


Fridays:


Regular Saturdays:


Special Saturdays:


I store our chore cards in this handy plastic sleeve. The girls wear their chore cards in these plastic holders while they are doing their chores. I put them in the holder upside down, so the girls only have to reach down and flip them up to read them, instead of flipping them around.


As they finish each chore, which is numbered in the order it is to be done, they slip it to the back of the holder. This way they know once they get to card #1, they are done with that set of chores and it is time to come let me know they are finished so I can inspect.

You might also notice that I have clip art on each card, which works great with my girls who don't read or who are just learning to read.

I also have the steps required for each chore on the back of the applicable card; this helps my readers be able to go through a checklist to make sure everything has been done. For example, on the "CLEAN THE BATHROOM" card, there are reminders on the back to clean the toilet, sink and tub, wipe down the mirror, wipe the floor, replenish toilet wipes, etc.

We also have one extra card that carries into each section called a SECRET ITEM. Basically, this card reminds each girl to do one thing to help out that is not on their list of chores. They don't tell me what it is, I try to figure it out each day. The purpose of this is to teach them to look on their own for ways to help without having to be told what to do. This seems to help with the complaints about things like picking up toys they didn't get out or tidying up the kitchen sink even if it has dishes they didn't put in it, etc.

In a nutshell, this is how we do it. We don't do it perfectly, somedays we don't do it at all. My house is by no means perfect - in fact it is still much more cluttered than I'd like and this is my ongoing major task for 2009-2010 - eliminating clutter. But with our chore packs, at least we can get through those daily tasks with relative ease and have more time available for projects and family time!