Tell me about your family's chores.

[mommylove]

So many philosophies ... what works for your family? Ages, schedule, payment or not, etc.

[marbles]

[Aerynne]

My kids unload the dishwasher every morning and don't get paid.

They do not get paid for keeping their own rooms clean or folding their own laundry, but they have to do it.

They clean bathrooms once a week for $2 each if they do the bathtub, $1 if they do not.

They each vacuum one floor of the house (about 600 square feet) every Saturday and do not get paid for it.

They take the trash and recycle to the curb and bring it back in for 25 cents per trip (50 cents per kid per week) This is the big huge trash that goes out to the curb, not taking the kitchen garbage out.

That's all my big kids- I should really do something to let the little kids earn money- haven't started that yet.

[Mother of Sons]

We don't have set chores although my youngest has asked. I tell them what to do and they do it. No one gets paid unless it's a special circumstance.

[greengirl19]

G is getting old enough where we really need some more organization in this area. Looking forward to good ideas!

[tazmom]

I have a list on the whiteboard of what needs to get done each day. I have 1 or 2 things on the list which changes each day so we get to the less regular stuff like dusting.

Some days I assign things to each kid. Some days we all work on it until the list is done. On days gma is watching them, she does most of the list.

The kids are not paid for chores. They live in the house so they need to help keep it clean.

[houseforjoy]

my 3 older each do one chore a day (varying difficulty based on age) and they get a popsicle stick for doing it. on fridays they can do extra chores for extra popsicle sticks. they can turn in popsicle sticks on saturdays for wii time, or turn in at anytime for one on one time with a parent, or they can all chip in sticks to go to like a pizza and game place or other things.

we havent' started money with them at all, but we will probably start it at least with oldest one next year, but i have no idea how we will work it.

[backtobasicsmum]

Here's a picture of one of my kids' chore charts. And there are definitely other things they do that aren't in there (like shoveling in winter and mowing in the summer). They are done bc we're a family of 7, and everyone has to help!

They do get an allowance too, but they aren't tied to chores. We want them to have practice handling money.

[Beth1231]

I don't have a chore list or give out allowance. When they are older,maybe.
Basically,I just let my kids know cleaning time is coming in x amount of minutes. Sometimes I set a timer. Then I turn on music and we all clean,minus the baby.
All sorts of various things get done.
Other than that,it's very random. "A,come set the table for dinner" or "C,put the shoes into pairs along the wall."
Nothing fancy,but it works for us.
Eta: A does have one daily,as needed chore and that's the care and feeding of her guinea pigs.

[sweetpeas]

When we started chores, I didn't do any "incentives" it was simply what we do . . . and that worked well. Then several years ago as part of the homeschool reviews I was doing on my blog we reviewed a chore chart system that I liked aspects of but it included incentives for chores done. The author claimed that the incentives were just to get kids into the groove and after awhile the kids wouldn't need/care about the incentives anymore, but that wasn't the case with my kids, and it feels like ever since, there's been more of an attitude of "what's in it for me?" that we didn't have before. . . MAYBE it just happened to hit when that would have started anyway, but in retrospect I really wish we'd never done the incentives. . .

Morning chores: 11 year olds one empties the litter box, the other does a quick-clean of the bathroom. 5 yr old feeds the cats.

We used to alternate who made which meals, then we agreed that they'd cook/clean up from meals but I'd do all the washing of dishes. Then, awhile back they mutually decided that L would do all the cooking and A would clean up after meals. L has fully embraced all the cooking (she recently told me to get out of "her kitchen" lol), A sometimes complains that there's more clean-up now because L keeps adding in more cooking . . . making more things from scratch (bread, cinnamon rolls, butter, she wants to try making cheese . . . ) so I end up doing some of the clean-up just to keep the peace, I don't want to discourage L from all the cooking . . .

Late afternoon all together we do a quick whole-house tidy and then each of the big girls has one more chore (one sweeps, the other folds/puts away laundry). Generally it works out that since most of the toys that needed to be tidied were the 5 yr old's, she puts those toys away while big sisters do the other chores.

Also there's one additional chore that can be done whenever each day. That varies by day. . . it's once-a-week things like vacuuming, dusting, mopping, deeper cleaning of the bathroom, once-a-month things like mopping the pantry, and once-a-year things like washing windows and flipping mattresses. I divided those all up so that we each do one on Sun. (dh works Sundays, and we go to church on Sat. so Sunday is just another weekday for us), Mon & Tues. Wed is "catch-up day" for if we missed one of those days. Thurs is music lesson & errand day so we don't have an extra chore those days. And then Fri the chores focus on getting things ready for Sabbath.

The yearly chores are a separate list that we just write the date on when we do them, so we can make sure they rotate to approximately yearly (some could stand to be done more often if life ever settles down enough that we get "ahead"), everything else, I don't stress if we miss it . . . it'll cycle around again.

So, other than cooking, there are 3 chores per day, plus taking care of their own things.