Family Chore List (Printables!)

Chores are a big struggle in our family. We have 6 people living in a pretty cramped space, and the brunt of the housework has been left to Mom and Dad. I've never understood how it is fair for four kids to TRASH a place, just to turn around and expect the two people who work all day to make sure that they have food to eat and a roof over their heads to also pick up after them. No way kiddos!

We've tried a variety of chore charts in the past, sometimes they work for a bit, sometimes they don't work at all. Boredom seems to be the biggest culprit for the ones that work for awhile and then stop working, so I devised this plan for a chore chart that rotates the tasks so that each person in the family has responsibilities in ONE room for ONE week and the next week they move onto something different.

Obviously, you may need to tweak this to suit your own family's needs, but it's highly flexible.

I started by creating colored slips of paper with the names of each family member on them (I cut an index card into 5 slips because only 5 of our family members are big enough to participate in actual chores right now - Colored them with a light colored marker and wrote names in black)

Then I worked on cutting the lists in half (they print two lists per page, landscape format)

After cutting the lists apart, I positioned them on an old cork board that we had laying around unused, I attached them with some push pins and then randomly assigned everyone to a room, as seen below:

I didn't add my youngest to the chore chart, though after speaking with hubby this evening, agreed that she should be added as a "helper" to someone else. These lists are formatted so that there are three DAILY tasks, to be done... every day... and then one task for each day of the week that is a "weekly" task. Each person's name will rotate clockwise to a different list on Sunday evening/Monday Morning to the next room list and they will work on that list through the week. The youngest, when she's added will go with someone else and her name will more COUNTER-clockwise, that way she is working in a different room and with a different person each week, to help her learn how to do the tasks as she get's older.



As the house gets bigger and SHE gets bigger, other rooms/areas will be added to the list and she will get her own list to do.



For families that are bigger, you could double up people in rooms (perhaps highlight jobs in different colors so one person does half and the other does half?) or if your family is smaller, double up the lists, so each person does two rooms or something similar.


This works well for our family!


Just print the lists (takes 3 sheets of printer paper) and cut them in half. Then create your name markers and set your board up! Click here to purchase your copy of the printable lists for just $0.99!

So sad...

Back in December, on Christmas Eve, while preparing for our annual get-together with Hubby's family, he fell down the stairs. It wasn't a typical case of clumsiness, see half of our house is in a perpetual state of renovation, we tore everything out except the outer walls about 4 years ago, and every time we've thought we might get it done, plans have changed. Over time it's become an unofficial storage area. We were storing some things for my sister-in-law when she moved to North Carolina, and when she came up over the Christmas holiday she wanted to take some of her stuff home with her

Best Christmas Gift ever - Dixie, a rescue dog from NC

So in the process of him helping her bring her things down, she tells him to be careful on the stairs because there is some lumber laying on them. He gets cocky, says he's fine, that he's been up and down that death-trap set of stairs hundreds of times. No sooner does he say this, and he steps on the lumber, slides down the stairs, and then can't walk properly for a good month. After having it examined the day after Christmas at the ER and then by an Orthopedic Surgeon we knew that if it wasn't better by the beginning of February, we'd be looking at surgery.

Luckily for him, it was fine by the beginning of February, and after a month of living on short-term disability we were ready for regular paychecks again. No such luck. Work had no work for him, and he had to use the ONLY 3 weeks of vacation/personal time he gets for the whole year so that we could have an income. After that, still no work. Time for unemployment. It is now March 26th, he's been out of work for over 3 months and home with me every day... As a happily married couple, you'd think we'd be driving each other crazy and just about ready to start calling divorce lawyers by now.... not so much... the last 3 months have been the best in our married life, but alas, it had to end sometime... he went back to work an hour and a half ago, and I'm missing him like crazy already...

However....!

With him being gone, it will be much easier for me to find time during the day to get some stuff updated on the Lupine Ridge website, get some new soaps made, fix some candles that need fixing, and prepare some orders! So thank goodness for the rain today, this momma is gonna be busy!