Kids & Chores – Keeping Chores Easy to Manage
Hey there! Please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you click through those links and make a purchase, I may earn a little commission - at no cost to you! It is one way that helps me to continue this blog and create inspiring, encouraging and supporting content for you!
A New Spin on the Kid’s Chore Chart
It was time, time to increase the kiddo’s responsibilities, and set a plan in place for…. chores! At this time they are 7 and 9, and while they have helped with various things through out the recent years, it definitely has not been consistent.
We knew we had to increase the focus on these!
- Teaching Responsibility – we knew assigning chores they would learn the importance of contributing to the family and seeing the outcomes of their actions.
- Developing Skills – we want to raise kids that know the essential skills as they grow, from cooking to cleaning, organizing, money management, and more.
- Building Self-Confidence – completing tasks boosts their self-esteem and confidence. They are able to see what they accomplished and how they contributed to our family and home.
- Encouraging Appreciation – we were recognizing that the appreciation for our efforts in maintaining our home was lacking. We wanted to be sure we supported appreciation as a value!
There are many more benefits, but these were the four that led us to working out a chore plan!
Considering Our Options
While there are plenty of reasons why we wanted to start, I wasn’t 100% sure how I wanted to implement it. If I am being honest, the idea of a chore chart just wasn’t doing it for me. I felt like it was just going to be another thing for me to manage. I also didn’t want to limit the chore list, and I wanted to figure out a way to implement the items that don’t happen as frequently or we regularly missed (like cleaning the freezer and fridge, anyone else?) I know this option works great for others, I just knew I was looking for something different.
I can’t remember how, when or what lead to the chore stick idea but I started milling around the idea, that eventually brought me to Our Chore Stick Pick!
The Chore Stick Pick
It didn’t start with a catchy name, but the name came as we have been using it, and it seems to fit pretty good! “Time for your chore stick pick!”
Why I am liking The Chore Stick Pick:
- We typically pick on Sunday or Saturday morning depending on our weekend schedule, but I will be implementing a week-day pick as well, at some point for them to complete through out the week. Or if we quickly want to add a cleaning session, it is easy to do.
- It is easy to add new/more chores as I think of them.
- It is easy to remove or edit any of the current chores.
- They get to choose the “level”; 3 small, 2 medium or 1 larger chore.
- I don’t have to change the chart, or manage who is doing what, when, etc.
How to make your own Chore Sticks
- Gather your supplies:
- Two small cups to hold the sticks, one for “to- do” and one for “done”. I just used two mini glasses we had at home already. They could be plastic cups, Tupperware or anything else similar.
- Popsicle sticks
- A pen or marker for writing the chore on the stick
- 3 colored markers
- A label option
- Write any and all chores on a popsicle stick, you can choose the breakdown of chores you want. For example, you could list “Clean the downstairs bathroom” on one. Or you can break it into a couple, “Clean bathroom floor”, “Wipe bathroom counter and sink” and “Clean shower”. We broke down the larger chores into smaller components.
3. Divide the chore sticks into three categories, small/easy, medium and hard/long/big. There is no exact science to this. Just think about the age and abilities right now of your kids and break them out.
4. Color the tip of the popsicle stick based on category, for example all the small/easy chore sticks are blue, medium is orange and hard/bigger chore are purple.
Add a label to one of your cups, breaking out how many of a color they would pick. Our label maker was broken when I was doing this so I just used a address label and tape.
And there you have it! A set of chores ready for picking today, tomorrow or this weekend!
Remember you can always remove chores, add new chores or change the color if you realize that it should be in a different category.
Chore Stick Examples:
Here are a few different options we have on our sticks.
- Clean the Fridge with mom
- Dust/wipe down the downstairs/upstairs baseboards
- Clean/wipe down the bathroom counter and sink
- Clean all mirrors (we have three)
- Wipe down the kitchen cabinet doors
- Empty or load dishwasher (depending on the status when they pick)
- Vacuum the stairs
- Clean bathroom floor
- Disinfect handles
- Sweep kitchen
- Steam kitchen floor (Love my Shark Steamer!)
I also like breaking it down because it is much more manageable to teach them how to do their picked task. Instead of teaching them how to clean the whole bathroom, I am able to just focus on teaching my daughter how to clean the bathroom floor, or my son how to clean the patio window.
Interestingly….my daughter prefers to pick one bigger chore, while my son likes three small ones. The middle range is picked last. All chores got into the done cup, until all sticks are picked adn then we start over again.
Daily chores (helping with dinner clean up, tidying rooms, etc.) are included on their morning and evening routine checklist. We don’t even refer to them as chores, just part of those routines. (Usually 😊)
For those of you looking for a different option than the typical chore chart I encourage you to give this one a try! It has been an easy way to add responsibility for the kids, it feels like less “managing” on my end and leads to great learning opportunities for the kids.
Do you think you are going to try it? What chores are you going to be sure to include?
I love this and that you recognize that managing a chore chart is a pain! This is a great way to implement responsibility without adding too much more to your already full list!
Thank you! It has been the right blend of adding responsibility for them, with out adding too much more for me!